Jennifer Koffman, a three-year acquisitions veteran at the Toronto office of Behaviour Distribution, has left the company to open Hurricane Pictures, a joint venture with Sanjay Burman of Burman Films.
The new prodco is currently working out a deal with Germany-based Der Spiegel to coproduce a half-hour tv series for kids based on the book How-to Anything for Kids. The book is a compilation of stories from numerous authors teaching kids all sorts of life skills in a humorous and fun way.
The half-hour series is budgeted at $60,000 per ep. Alan Garden, who has worked for Universal Studios and produced a number of tvontario specials, will line produce.
Also in development at Hurricane is the one-hour, $1.5-million animation special History of Canada, a comic take on the nation’s past. Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis are interested in narrating the show as the voices of Bob and Doug McKenzie. Stand-up comedian Mike Macdonald is writing the script and Garden is line producing.
Sir Richard Attenborough, director of Gandhi, is currently looking at a Hurricane feature in development, The Iqual Masih Story, the true story of the young Pakistani boy sold by his parents to the Mafia and forced into child labor. He escaped and met with President Bill Clinton to voice his concerns about child labor and was later murdered at the age of 12.
– Molly Parker in Bootleg’s first feature
Kissed star Molly Parker, Johnny Whitworth (Donnie Ray in The Rainmaker) and Half-Baked’s Guillermo Diaz will lead the cast in Bootleg Films’ first theatrical feature, Jesus Freaks.
Producer Milan Cheylovs says l.a. casting director Ronnie Yeskel, who cast Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, was so intrigued with the script she waived half her fees to line up the talent.
The film is generating a buzz in the u.s. and Cheylovs has a number of offers on the table from American distributors who spy commercial potential with the young talent on board the art-house film. Private financing has been secured for half the $1.3-million budget.
To be shot this April in Toronto, the storyline has a rather unique twist – a woman convinces a killer that he is the son of God.
Bootleg partner Lori Lansens wrote the screenplay, which explores themes of sex, sin and redemption. Lansens, who has directed two award-winning shorts and written and produced five films, will make her feature directorial debut on Jesus Freaks.
Bootleg plans to produce two more of Lansens’ screenplays over the next 18 months – Dizzy, a character-driven drama, and the suspense comedy Rubble In Trouble, with Graham Greene attached as a villain cowboy. Cheylovs, who has worked on eps of Atlantis Films/ Tribune Entertainment’s Earth: Final Conflict, will direct Rubble.
Bootleg’s credits include the made-for-cable feature Under My Skin, written by Lansens and distributed by Sullivan Releasing.
– More seeds scattering
White Pine Pictures recently held a premiere screening of its new History Television/Radio-Canada doc series A Scattering of Seeds at the Royal Ontario Museum, offering industry guests glimpses of the 13 half-hours celebrating the unsung stories of immigrants who helped forge early communities across Canada.
History’s Norm Bolen was so impressed he threw his hat into the ring for another order. Vision tv and rdi have also renewed.
The series is produced by Peter Raymont, Lindalee Tracey and Maria Pimentel, but each episode is commissioned to a different director who paints a portrait of a community builder.
Raymont will now be on the lookout for new treatments.
He is currently hitting up the funders of the initial order, budgeted at roughly $110,000 per ep, which included Citizenship and Immigration Canada (the agency put up one-third of the budget), Multiculturalism Canada and Canadian Heritage, as well as the ctcpf equity investment and lfp programs and the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit. scn also licensed the program.
Deals with corporate sponsors are pending. Raymont is courting company ceos who are recent immigrants and connected to strong ethnic communities.
A Website has been set up with the aid of the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund and the CRB Foundation.
A Scattering of Seeds launched Jan. 14 and is slotted Wednesday nights at 10:30 p.m. on History.
– Wheeling Motel deals
Having picked up $300,000 in production service deferrals – $230,000 in private funding and $70,000 in bridge financing – deferring $100,000 in above-the-line script and producer fees, and mortgaging their house to make up the shortfall, coproducers David Parker and Nicholas Tabarrok are greenlighting their feature film Motel.
In exchange for equity stakes in the $700,000 project, deals have been struck with several Toronto companies, with PS Production Services taking care of all equipment needs, Casablanca Sound Services supplying nonlinear picture editing facilities and post sound production, Wallace Studios providing soundstage facilities, and Bratton Scenery and Display kicking in sets and construction staff.
Parker says shooting at a slow time of the year (March and April), keen interest in the script and the desire of the companies to invest in future talent is what landed him the deals.
The game plan is to finish the film, get it on the festival circuit to increase their bargaining position, then negotiate for a distributor.
Parker is writer/director of this ‘story of redemption,’ which follows a first-time thief plagued with guilt over his crime who hides out in a seedy motel. There he meets a woman who explains to him her belief that all things happen for a reason. That night he is witness to her murder.
Earl Pastko (The Sweet Hereafter, Highway 61) will play the main antagonist. Parker wrote the lead for Don McKellar who has signed on for the role. Frank Bonner, Herb of WKRP in Cincinnati fame, will play a detective.
Danny Bonaduce (The Partridge Family) has seen the script, loved it and is being pursued for a cameo.
Composer Gary Koftinoff has been commissioned to write the score.
– CFC lineup
The Canadian Film Centre’s Feature Film Project has chosen director Chris Grismer’s Clutch as this year’s production. ‘Love, information, and the inner workings of a combustion engine’ are the themes of the dark comedy written by Grismer. Allison Lewis is producing.
The cfc is gearing up to begin production on four short films: Early Retirement, directed by Paul Carriere, written by Tamara Griffiths and produced by Elke Town; Cold Feet, written and directed by Jim Allodi and produced by Nick DePencier; Sister’s Keeper, directed by Carole O’Brien, who also cowrote with Ines Buchli; and Bridal Path, directed by Cynthia Roberts, written by Melissa Cox and produced by Remo Girlato.
Bridal Path shoots the first week of February.
– LIFT finds a home
After a year of wandering from venue to venue, the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto has found a permanent home for its monthly screenings – The Cinecycle at 129 Spadina Ave. The first screening of ’98 is Jan. 29 at 8 p.m. and includes Mario Tenorio’s The Red Window and Barbara Mainguy’s The Front Seat.
– Marketing opp in York
Can do, a York-based community development corporation, in partnership with the York Civic Service Centre, is putting together a film resource guide. Any York film and tv-related businesses, organizations, artists and producers can be listed free of charge. Jan. 29 is the deadline. Call (416) 394-2925