Montreal: Action star Wesley Snipes (U.S. Marshals, One Night Stand, Murder at 1600) heads a prominent cast in the Filmline International political thriller The Art of War.

The massive 50-day shoot, with crew levels ranging from 120 to 180, is being directed by Christian Duguay (Joan of Arc, The Assignment) and produced by Nicolas Clermont and wraps here Nov. 11. Extensive second-unit photography is scheduled for New York and Hong Kong.

Warner Bros. will distribute in the u.s., with Motion International handling Canada.

Snipes’ last movie, Blade (New Line), was a major hit, ranking 25th at the domestic box office in ’98 and taking in more than us$70 million. Clermont anticipates a 1,500- to 2,000-screen release next July or August.

Snipes is joined by Marie Matiko; Maury Chaykin (Entrapment, Dances With Wolves), who has shot five other films this year; Anne Archer (Fatal Attraction, Clear and Present Danger); Michael Biehn (Aliens), the very bad guy from the first Terminator movie; Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Mortal Combat); and Donald Sutherland (Free Money) in the role of the un secretary-general.

Locations include the harbor front, Vieux Montreal, downtown streets and an abandoned and very wet Wellington Tunnel, exteriors which generally work for the story’s New York setting.

The intrigue is set in both nyc and Hong Kong as an elite team of un special agents attempts to uncover an assassin.

Exec producers are Snipes, Dan Halstad and a very present Elie Samaha, who earlier worked with Clermont on several Filmline projects, including The Peacekeeper, Hollow Point and Natural Enemy.

Pierre Gill is the dop, Anne Pritchard is production designer and Jeff Ward is the film’s stunt coordinator. Hybride Technologies is creating the extensive cgi. The editor is Michel Arcand.

Foreign distribution is being handled by Franchise Pictures llc and Germany’s Intertainment Licensing GmbH, which has Western Europe and the People’s Republic of China.

Clermont says he is currently working on ‘three very large [feature film] projects,’ but can’t discuss details for a few weeks.

The Art of War is budgeted at $37 million.

*Quatre Par Quatre debut

It’s been an auspicious debut for production house Quatre Par Quatre. The company’s first dramatic film, Patrick Demers’ 13-minute short Le Decharge, was selected from among 350 hopefuls for the Perspective Canada program at the Toronto International Film Festival, winning the festival’s best short film prize. The film was on the opening night program at the Vancouver International Film Festival and is also being screened at the Montreal International Festival of New Cinema and New Media, Oct. 14-24.

And while Demers writes his first feature script for Quatre Par Quatre producers Luc Dery, Joseph Hillel and Josee Roberge, the producing trio has started filming on their first feature, Philippe Falardeau’s La moitie gauche du frigo, which received just under $350,000 in funding from Telefilm Canada.

‘We can’t complain, it’s our first request at Telefilm,’ says Dery, a former distrib manager at Aska Film Distribution and Malofilm.

The producer says he simply cannot talk about La Moitie’s surprise, ‘socially engaged’ concept. dop Josee Deshaies is shooting in digital video and Sophie Leblond will edit.

La Moitie Gauche is budgeted at $825,000, with additional funding coming from sodec’s Jeunes Createurs program and distrib Film Tonic. Radio-Canada and pay-tv movie channel Super Ecran are also signed on. La Moitie shoots over 26 days, from Oct. 4 to Nov. 10.

‘We want to work with young directors, young creative, not so much in terms of age, but in terms of spirit and approach,’ says Dery.

Quatre Par Quatre is developing the Andre Turpin feature J’ai un crabe dans la tete, ‘a contemporary urban drama about seduction and fear of judgment.’ Turpin (La Comtesse de Baton Rouge, Cosmos, Zigrail) is the dop on the new Denis Villeneuve movie Maelstrom and will script the $1.5-million film later this winter, with hopes for a spring/summer start. Telefilm, sodec and Super Ecran have invested in the development.

*POV’s Groove Society

Point of View Pictures’ first feature is Groove Society, a story of eight young people and their journey of self-discovery in the after-hours world of sex, drugs and dance music.

Director and coproducer Francois Garcia says editing and post are underway, with pickups in Montreal and a week in Ibiza, London and Berlin still to come, probably in late November. A good piece of the action was shot cinema-verite style in a local nightclub called Stereo.

The film is being originated on digital video and stars Corey Haim (The Lost Boys, Lucas, Licence to Drive), who is also coproducing. Also featured are Danny Lawless as the ‘flier-boy philosopher,’ Corey Bessner as the omnipresent dealer and Rami Yasin as ‘a trannie with a heart-of-gold,’ along with Jordan Perlis, Anna Nahabedian and Marie Eve Blackburn .

Christian Viel is the film’s dop and co-editor with Eric Mealing.

Garcia says the $800,000 production is entirely self-financed. ‘Basically we shot this movie with no distributors attached. We wanted the freedom.’

Garcia – who says his leg-up in the business came from Blackwatch producer Kim Berlin – and Groove Society writer/coproducer Sandeep Panesar are in development on Apartment 36, a historical comedy/drama feature penned by Panesar, as well as an original action thriller, Dark Runner, to be coproduced by Garcia and Panesar’s Overdrive Communications.

Buyers will get a serious shot at Groove Society blown up to 35mm at the upcoming mifed and American Film Market, Feb. 24 to March 3. A movie soundtrack release is also planned.

*Cine-Groupe animates new Disney TV movie

Cine-Groupe, in association with Sony Wonder, is producing a 75-minute animated musical prequel to the classic Wizard of Oz story, Lion of Oz and the Badge of Courage.

The $5-million movie has just started production in-studio at Cine-Groupe and is based on the Roger S. Baum book. Baum is the great-grandson of Oz creator L. Frank Baum. The cast features Jason Priestley as the lion, Lynn Redgrave as the wicked witch of the east, Jane Horrocks, Kathy Griffin, Bobcat Goldthwait and perennial funnyman Dom DeLuise.

Michel Lemire, Cine-Groupe’s vp animation production, is project creative producer. Tim Deacon, who recently wrapped the animated Columbia TriStar feature Heavy Metal ii, is directing. Greg Wilson is head storyboard artist.

Disney Channel will broadcast Lion of Oz next fall.

Cine-Groupe has distribution rights to Canada and French- and German-speaking territories in Europe. Sony Wonder’s New York-based subsidiary Sunbow Entertainment has u.s. and other territories.

Newly named vp communications Marie-Christine Dufour says the saucy, alien butt-kicking Mega Babies animation series, produced by Cine-Groupe and Sony Wonder, premiers this week on Fox Family Channel and Teletoon.

*Lies opens movie six-pack

It’s a wrap for Artificial Lies, a contemporary thriller and the first of six tv movies from Montreal’s Blackwatch Productions and producer Kim Berlin for exporter Saban International.

The film is directed by Rodney Gibbons (The Neighbor, Owd Bob) and stars Melrose Place headliners Jack Wagner and Daphne Zuniga, and Canadian actor Stewart Bick, who was featured in the Bruce McDonald tv movie Platinum.

In Artificial Lies, Zuniga plays the disturbed daughter of an uncaring father under suspicion for the murder of her psychiatrist and lover. Unsure of just who the dead shrink really was, and what took place on the fatal night, she turns to two so-called friends for help – a lawyer played by Bick and her latest psychiatrist and squeeze, played by Wagner.

Bruno Phillip is the shoot’s dop, Donna Noonan (Little Men) is the designer and Blackwatch president Bill Mariani is exec producing.

Blackwatch has both u.s. and Canadian rights to the movie six-pack, which is scheduled for delivery by the end of next year. Saban has international.

*More film action

Upcoming film action in October as reported by the stcvq includes the second season of the Telescene Film Group sitcom Big Wolf on Campus, produced by Robin Spry and Kathy Wolf, and the Cinequest Films tv movie Cause of Death, directed by Marc S. Grenier and produced by Shimon Dotan.

Also on the boards are two productions from Cinar Films, the feature film sequel Buttercream Gang iii, scripted by the talented Patricia Lavoie, with Bruce Neibaur directing and Serge Denis producing; and the seventh season of the Nickelodeon/ytv tween mystery series Are You Afraid of the Dark?, which shoots from Oct. 4 to late February with Ron Weinberg producing.

Feature action includes Une Petite Fete, a Films Vision 4 coproduction with France and Belgium, shooting to Oct. 8 under the direction of Cris Vanden Stappen.

The new Robert Lepage movie, Possible Worlds, an In Extremis Images coproduction with Toronto’s East Side Film Company, shoots from Oct. 11 to Nov. 19, with Bruno Jobin and Sandra Cunningham producing. Cunningham and Lux Films’ Nicole Robert coproduced the new John L’Ecuyer feature film Saint-Jude. Michel Chauvin is pm, Jonathan Freeman is the dop and Francois Seguin is the art director.

Motion International’s Largo Winch series has returned to shooting mode. Principal photography is slated for Nov. 16 to Jan. 27 in Montreal and then on to France Feb. 8 to April 5. Producers include David Patterson, Phil Bedard, Jacques Methe, Leon Perahia and Ronald Gilbert. Catherine Faucher is the pm.

Ultimate G’s, a Sky High Entertainment large-screen extreme sports drama from producers Carl Samson and Yves Fortin, is filming at various out-of-town locations through to Oct. 16 under director Keith Melton.

The Eddie Murphy feature Pluto Nash is in active preproduction for a rescheduled March 2000 startup. Martin Bregman, Louis A. Stroller and Michael S. Bregman are the producers. Ron Underwood is the director and Christina Kontos is pm.