Prince Edward Island’s Cellar Door Productions and Toronto-based Catalyst Entertainment have entered into a development deal with Teletoon to turn the half-hour Christmas special The True Meaning of Crumbfest into a 13-part series.

Over the next year the toon companies will be putting together storyboards, character design packages, scripts and a bible and are hoping for a fall delivery. The estimated budget for the series is $500,000 per episode.

The half-hour, $760,000 special, which kick-started the deal, will air on Teletoon Dec. 20. It aired on pax-tv Miami earlier this month, and Catalyst executive producer Kevin Gillis says negotiations are underway with broadcasters in France, Italy, Spain and England.

The animated special about a curious mouse named Eckhart who sets off into the real world to discover the reason for the annual overabundance of crumbs in the farmhouse where he lives, will have its Canadian premiere at a gala screening Dec. 17 in Charlottetown.

Crumbfest voice talent will be on hand for the screening, including Jessica Pellerine (Eckhart), Jack MacAndrew (Grandpa Tomis) and Marlene O’Brien (Mother Mouse), and writer David Weale will read from his original story on which the special and series are based.

The event will raise money for Transition House, a shelter for abused mothers and children.

*A Little Something for CTV

Halifax-based A Little Something Productions recently wrapped its first half-hour drama for ctv, Shelter.

The show about an estranged father and son who find shelter in a dilapidated log cabin in a Nova Scotia forest was shot mostly on location from Dec. 8-13.

The old stone building holds supernatural qualities, taking the two on a psychological journey which forces them to confront their past and break through the barriers destroying their relationship.

Chris Zimmer is executive producer on the $400,000 project.

Jono Nemethy is producer, Cecil Fernando wrote and directed and Russell Gienapp is the cinematographer. Brian Heighton plays the father and Jordan Harvey (The Divine Ryans) his son.

*Phare-Est’s Gen-Xploration

Canadian Gen-Xers are the subject of Moncton, n.b.-based Productions du Phare-Est’s latest documentary, La Point de L’iceberg (The Tip of the Iceberg).

Shot throughout the fall and currently in post, the $400,000 project took director Renee Blanchar and dop Didier Maigret to Jasper, Vancouver, Ottawa, Baffin Island, Montreal and St. Anthony, Nfld.

The idea was to get a snapshot of the generation by finding out about their values, how they live, think and how they look at the future.

‘The idea was not to take a survey of the generation but to have an expression of them and about their realities,’ says producer Cecil Chevrier.

In order to capture those realities in their purest form, the director sent video cameras out to participants in the film for a week. Their assignment was to capture on tape what they felt was most revealing about their lives, something Chevrier says made for some very interesting footage and resulted in the participants getting more involved in the project.

The French-track doc should be completed by April 1999 and will air on tfo.

Other projects in development at Phare-Est include the French-language feature film La Testamant for which Chevrier will be jetting off to France in search of a coproducer.

Also in the works is La Vrai Vie (The Real Life), based on a novel by New Brunswick writer France Daigle, who will pen the script with Toronto writer Jean-Marc Larivier.

Phare-Est producer Gilles Losier was approached by Saint John director Ken Furlong about working on a feature he is developing based on the David Adams Richards novel Hope in The Desperate Hour.

*More Pirates

Director Wayne Moss and production designer Philip Craig have joined producer Bill Niven on Halifax-based Salter Street’s latest preschool puppet show, Pirates for ytv.

Veterans of children’s television, Moss has directed such kids’ favorites as Sesame Street, Skinnamarink tv and Fraggle Rock while Craig has worked on Under the Umbrella Tree and Noddy.

The 15-minute, 40-episode Pirates series is shooting at Electropolis Studios January through February.

While the original plan called for traditional puppetry, writer Jeff Rosen introduced the idea of living puppets, actors in costumes who will interact with the puppets.

Green-screen effects will make it look like the pirates’ ship The Tantrum is actually out on the high seas.

Salter is aiming for a spring delivery.