montreal: Telescene Film Group and MTV: Music Television in the u.s. have announced a coventure agreement to produce Live Through This, a music-driven, coming-of-age dramatic tv series. The one-hour pilot will shoot on location in Montreal in mid-September, with plans to go to 26 episodes. The deal is mtv’s first foray into drama in Canada and was announced at Telescene’s agm in Montreal July 28.

At the agm, Telescene executive vp and coo Paul Painter said the company was set to surpass $100 million in new Action Adventure Network pilots and episodes and u.s. cable movies and series production in the current fiscal year.

New production slated for delivery in fiscal 2000 and 2001 includes six tv movies under two series headers – Angel of Death and President’s Daughter – based on the Jack Higgins crime stories and financed in association with Park Entertainment; three aan movie pilots, including Gulliver’s Travels, presold to France’s M6 and TF1 and ProSieben in Germany; and The Norsemen, a European coproduction with Granada Television, to be shot on location in Europe.

The market responded positively to the forward-looking developments announced at the agm.

More good news concerns The Lost World pilot, which appears to have recouped its negative cost. The tv movie is the first aan pilot to go to series and attracted 300,000 buys on its DirecTv premiere at $3 a pop. The show was sold (for a very limited window) to Turner Network Television for almost $3 million.

‘On the series, between the international guarantee, the domestic guarantee and the tax credits and incentives between the Australian and Canadian coproduction, we’re pretty much covered,’ says Michael Yudin, president of Telescene Entertainment, New York. ‘We’re sure to have plenty of dinosaurs and special effects [in the series] and do it on a $1-million budget.’

Yudin says European buyers appreciate Telescene’s consultative coproduction approach. ‘The fact of the matter is the European countries are producing quality programming themselves and they don’t need another medical series or another cop show,’ he says.

Telescene ‘will have more European [coproduced] programming on in the States [this season] than most individual European countries,’ he adds.

Tough negotiations

Also slated for production in the year ahead are new episodes of the Fox Family Channel sitcom Big Wolf on Campus.

If Misguided Angels can draw ratings comparable to Big Wolf On Campus (a 0.4 or 0.5 average cable rating), Yudin says he’s confident it will also be renewed. Painter says bwoc will be renewed, although there is no official confirmation and Telescene is hanging tough in securing a fair profit margin for the series. Fox Family has a relatively short licence window.

If the company’s production and licensing strategy is extremely capital-intensive, the good news, says Yudin, is that the approach allows Telescene to hold on to the rich u.s. rights going forward. ‘In the long run this is what the company is built on. If we didn’t own any of this we’d have nothing to say. In the future, it is all about content and [these shows] will go into syndication, to cable, to terrestrial, they’ll go on to the Internet, and on broadband.’

In the u.s., Yudin says producers are now requesting web broadcast rights in program negotiations with tv networks.

The syndicated teen comedy series Student Bodies, seen on Global Television and ytv in Canada, is set to go into daily strip runs this fall with 65 half-hours completed. Telescene says it’s the first Canadian syndie series to go into strip with a Canadian company holding u.s. rights.

Broadcast on Showtime and Showtime’s new digital platform in the u.s., and on TMN-The Movie Network and Superchannel in Canada, season two of the erotic anthology series The Hunger will be hosted by pop legend David Bowie, who also stars in the season opening episode directed by Tony Scott. Tony and Ridley Scott are the series’ presenters.

In fiscal ’98/99, Telescene had net earnings of $7.1 million on revenues of $60.3 million, including $9.6 million in library sales. The company recently announced a production credit facility with the London, Eng. branch of bil worth $110 million.

At the agm, Telescene president Robin Spry said at least 70% of production costs are defrayed through presales, coproduction investments and tax credits prior to the start of principal photography.

Top-line revenue is projected at $116.5 million in the year ahead. The library is projected to grow to the equivalent of 502 half-hours by the end of fiscal 2000. Spry (48.9%) and Painter (51.1%) control all of Telescene’s class a multiple voting shares.