Simone Urdl has worked on many of Atom Egoyan’s films in roles ranging from producer’s assistant to post-production supervisor, but now she’s ready to produce a feature of her own. Urdl’s hooked up with short filmmaker John Kalangis who’s scripted and plans to direct and star in his debut feature, Jack and Jill.

Alongside the experience gained working with an award-winning director, Urdl’s longtime association with Egoyan no doubt pulled the extra weight required for the first-time feature filmmakers to wield a prebuy from TMN-The Movie Network and distribution deals with Alliance Independent Films (world rights) and Alliance Releasing (Canada), after which Egoyan came on board as exec producer of the $300,000 film.

Now the team of young Toronto filmmakers and actors attached to the project have their fingers crossed as they wait for word from the Harold Greenberg Fund and Telefilm Canada to greenlight their late November shooting sked.

The romantic comedy follows a series of escapades which ensues when Jack calls off his marriage to Jill and begins dating a foreign woman visiting Toronto. The new love interest realizes Jack really belongs with his old girlfriend and plots to lure the two back together. A bartender and confidant of the divided pair adds another layer of intrigue to the plot when she becomes involved with a dangerously charming stranger.

Coproducing the film are two other newcomers to the feature scene: Meredith Vuchnich, whose background includes live theater, distribution at Channel Zero, and fundraising for the Toronto International Film Festival, and Jennifer Weiss, a freelance assistant producer on projects for tmn, tsn and cbc.

The cast includes Shawna MacDonald, a long-running host of numerous ytv programs; Scott Gibson, who’s had recurring roles in Due South and Road to Avonlea; David Sutcliffe (Bad Day on the Block, Nancy Drew Mysteries); and Stavroula Logothettis (Kung Fu: The Legend Continues).

Recent Ryerson grad and award-winning music video cinematographer Luc Montpellier is the dop.

*New prodco nabs American investor

After shopping his first feature to no avail in Canada and tired of ‘the runaround at Telefilm,’ Roger Montgomery is set to direct and produce his us$2.9-million first feature ru2gether? with the timely intervention of an American angel – a private investor who plunked down the cash for the entire budget.

Montgomery, an American Film Centre and Canadian Film Centre Producers’ Lab alumnus (and longtime tv actor), penned the ‘fish out of water story’ of a black teen in a small white town who is given a satellite dish as a graduation present. Tuning in to the multichannel universe he realizes there is a whole world of black culture he has not been exposed to, and goes to the big city to seek the black experience.

Although Montgomery says the film is heavy with Cancon, Telefilm Canada ‘wouldn’t go for it’ and wanted changes to the script, which he refused to make. ‘The creative material always gets altered when you go to Telefilm, and you end up going through a lot for very little money,’ says Montgomery, which is why he went knocking on u.s. doors.

A spring shoot in Toronto is slated with actors Craig Kirkwood (Deepwater Black), Clarence Williams iii (Hoodlums) and Deborah Lobban (Henry and Verlin), with Boyz N the Hood dop Charles Mills shooting.

Montgomery is shopping for a distributor, pay-per-view and tv deals. He says Miramax is interested in looking at a finished cut.

Onyx Gems is the name of the production company Montgomery has opened with a five-year plan to produce three commercially driven low- to medium-budget features per year for theatrical release.

Also searching distant shores is Toronto director Ambrose Roche, who has scored a verbal agreement (no signed deal yet) from Hong Kong actress Maggi Cheung to star in his feature Young Mistro, a coming-of-age story about a teenager who works underage in a nightclub after his parents divorce. Cheung had two films in the Toronto film festival – Chinese Box and The Soong.

Roche has deals pending with a Hong Kong and l.a. investor for the $2-million project and Toronto’s Cinema Esperanca is on board to distribute. International presale opps are his current focus.

*True tale of a lady who stole a church

Toronto screenwriter Donald Martin is currently writing the tv movie script for A Little Bit of Heaven, based on the historical account of a woman who stole a church.

Yup, it’s a true tale which unfolded when CP Rail dismantled a western town and loaded buildings it claimed to own onto a flatbed train car, including the local church. The moxie widow of the church-builder took matters into her own hands and with the aid of local townspeople hijacked the train. Pursued through the Kootenay mountains, she eventually managed to transfer the church onto a barge and made her getaway by water.

Martin is developing the project with Alberta producer Helene White, who has a cabin in the area where the escapade took place. Forefront Productions is coproducing and a deal with wic-owned Superchannel has been locked.

The widow was a native of Scotland so the producers are eyeing the possibility of a u.k. coproduction. Price tag on the project will depend on whether they land an international partner. Some hefty location and action shoots are in the works if the budget allows.

Cast and director have not been lined up as yet.

Martin had a copro and distribution deal with Owl Television for the $3.5-million tv movie Flying Ghosts, which was skedded to shoot in early ’98 but landed in limbo with the recent bankruptcy of Owl’s parent company Combined Media. Post the Coscient/Astral takeover of Owl, Martin has met with Allegro Films (owned by Coscient) to discuss the project, but no word yet on whether the company will greenlight it.

Martin wrote the script with Robert Urich in mind for the lead (they are longtime friends) and Urich still wants to go ahead with the family adventure set against the construction of the Alaska Highway.

*Topping up

‘If I could get the money I’d love to make it a feature,’ says writer/ director Sandy Greer, who is currently developing the chronicle of Blackfoot political cartoonist Everett Soop as a one-hour tv doc through Toronto’s Two Wheel Productions. The southern Albertan, whose body of work spans over 20 years, is the only aboriginal artist included in the National Archives’ caricature collection.

Greer, who is coproducing Soop on Wheels with dop Joan Hutton, has Bravo! on board as first window, as well as commitments from Vision tv, Knowledge Network and Access, and funding from Heritage Canada. An exec producer, foreign broadcasters and distribution are currently being sought.

Greer thinks it will be an attractive property given its distinctiveness – ‘I’ve never seen a doc that focuses on aboriginal humor’ – as well as its cinematic qualities.

North of 60 actress Tantoo Cardinal is doing the voice-over.

There is an urgency to top up the budget (around $170,000) and roll camera, as funding secured from the cifvf comes with a time limit, and Soop, who has had Muscular Dystrophy since he was 17, is now in an advanced stage of the disease.

McNabb and Connolly is the domestic distributor.

*Chalk talk

Making the distrib-shopping rounds is Chalk Shadow, a new project from producer Sean Ryerson.

Clark Johnson (Homicide: Life on the Street, The Planet of Junior Brown) wrote the script and will direct the low-budget feature (under $5 million). Actors Ned Beatty and Richard Belzer (Homicide) are committed to the film, which will likely shoot in Canada with second unit in New York come February series hiatus time.

Chalk, a ‘very dark comedy,’ is premised on the unexpected turn of events which ensue when a scumbag art gallery owner kidnaps a starving artist he discovers in the Village. The mercenary mo is to force the artist to paint and reap the rewards, however, the first fatal flaw in the plan is that as an addict, the artist is more interested in drugs, the acquisition and use thereof, than art.

Ryerson is producer of the fictional media mogul battle saga Weapons of Mass Distraction, starring Gabriel Byrne and Ann Kingsley. The hbo movie, directed by Steve Surjik, scored four Emmy nominations.

*Upcoming

Miramax Films has lined up a Sept. 29 start for the feature 54. Mark Christopher is directing principals Ryan Philippe, Mike Myers and Breckin Meyer. Don Carmody is the exec producer on the shoot running to mid-November in Toronto.

Power Pictures is in the third week of prep on When Husbands Cheat, a tv movie for Lifetime Television in the u.s. Cast isn’t confirmed but Richard Colla is directing. Principal photography is skedded for Sept. 29 to Oct. 23.