Montreal: Cite-Amerique and distrib Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm have announced a deal to bring the story of Seraphin Poudrier to the big screen. Seraphin is perhaps Quebec’s most notorious fictional character, a terrifying rural miser who first emerged in Claude-Henri Grignon’s 1933 novel. The book has had eight reprints, was a popular cbf radio drama from 1939 to ’62, and the subject of two early movies, Un Homme et son peche (1948) and Seraphin (1950). A Radio-Canada tv series, Les Belles Histoires des Pays d’en Haut, had a remarkable 15-year run.

Prix Goncourt winning-novelist Antonine Maillet (Pelagie la charette) is writing the screenplay. Charles Biname (Eldorado, Margeurite Volant) will direct.

Biname and producer Lorraine Richard conducted an extensive review of all the adapted Seraphin stories, preparing a 96-scene synopsis for Maillet. As a historical drama circa 1890s – bringing to mind Claude Berri’s riveting Jean de Florette films – Seraphin will need a serious investment in set construction, production and distribution budgets. Biname says more will be known following next spring’s funding decisions. ‘We’ll have to look at the whole story with a modern eye, but it certainly won’t be a remake of the tv series. Maillet is so witty and funny and understands people so deep down,’ says the director.

aav will release Biname’s latest movie, La Beaute de Pandore in February.

Cite-Amerique and Passage Films of St. John’s, Nfld., and an Irish partner are slated to start filming this winter on an eight-hour miniseries, Random Passage, with John N. Smith as director.

*L’Ombre de l’Epervier returns

In the second season of the 10-hour Verseau International historical drama L’Ombre de l’Epervier, Pauline, the saga’s determined lead character played by Isabel Richer, is widowed and challenged from all quarters. The story unfolds in the period following wwii. Michele Barbara Pelletier, Olivier Aubin, Benoit Gouin, Claude Despins, Louis-Philippe Dandenault and Macha Limonchick round out the cast.

With location stints in Gaspe and in and around Montreal, the shoot goes for 85 days and wraps Dec. 15.

L’Ombre de l’Epervier ii debuts Feb. 7 on Radio-Canada and is budgeted at $8 million, with funding from Telefilm Canada, the Canadian Television Fund Licence Fee Program and an advance from international distributor Alliance Atlantis.

Verseau president Aimee Danis says src had greenlit L’Ombre by February, with the final Telefilm-ctf funding decisions made in June. The series is inspired by the Noel Audet novel. Robert Favreau and Guy Fournier wrote the screenplay. Favreau is directing and Sylvie Trudelle is supervising producer. Lyse Lafontaine is the producer.

Danis says the house and writer Jean-Paul LeBourhis are developing La Riviere des Jeremie, a new teleroman-drama with interest from src; Les Annees magiques, a doc series on early childhood development from writers Dominique Parent and Luc Hetu, with interest from Tele-Quebec; and a one-hour doc on the famous diction and voice coach Madame Audet from grandson and screenwriter Pierre Audet.

*Cinar ‘Twins’ with Flextech

The delightful stars of the new Cinar Corp. animation series Twins are five-year-olds Nelly and Lil. The girls couldn’t be more different, but seem destined to win tons of friends.

Lil is blond and neat and likes fluffy bunnies and being good. Nel has dark hair, plays in the mud, likes snakes and causing chaos. Of course, both girls are convinced their way is right.

Cassandra Schafhausen, Cinar’s vp animation, production and development, says the show is ‘an odd couple’ concept for small kids with a little something extra for the grown-ups. Twins is in production at the Cinar studios and is a coproduction with Flextech Rights of the u.k. Commissioning broadcasters are the u.k.’s itv and Canada’s ytv. Twins airs in the fall of 2000.

The series is based on the Harper Collins book by writer and illustrator John Wallace, who is part of the creative team.

This season, ytv also picked up Cinar’s Mona the Vampire.

Flextech supplies basic theme channels to u.k. pay-tv and is majority-owned by Liberty Media, a unit of u.s. cable giant tci.

*Silo – movies and new media

silo Corporation producer Melissa Malkin is developing a wide range of a/v projects, including movies, animation shorts and series, and interactive games and drama.

Editing is underway on Benedicte Ronfard’s first feature, Dog, shot on 35mm film over 21 days this past summer. It’s the story of a woman, played by Pascale Monpetit, who discovers a series of betrayals through her late hubbie’s dog. James Galway adapted the screenplay from a short story by Jeanette Pope. Pierre Lambert was the dop on the $500,000 shoot funded by Telefilm Canada and sodec. France Film will distribute.

Malkin also produced Dany Chiasson’s 29 Mai, 1431…le matin, a dramatic short with an alternate theory on the death of Joan of Arc. It was funded by Equinox (France Film), sodec, Canada Council and the onf-acic program. Two other low-budget feature projects are in development.

In animation, Jean-Pierre Morin’s She Had the Sunny Head is a series of ‘psychedelic lounge cartoons’ (shorts) financed by Canada Council and presold to Bravo! It is in its paint/composite phase at Covitec Studios.

In interactive, Silo has completed the first phase of the game Wilderness Adventure, programmed by Dyad Digital Studio, and is developing Le Temps de l’Amour, a drama concept platformed for Sony 2 PlayStation but ultimately aimed at i-tv. ‘I want to do content creation for convergent industries,’ says Malkin.

Temps de l’Amour has a prototype budget of $200,000, with funding from sodec and Telefilm’s Multimedia Fund.

*Warning: this program contains . . .

Director Marc Voizard and writer Jacques Jacob (Lance et Compte, Margeurite Volant) are developing two dramatic projects, a tv series and a feature film comedy.

The movie is a PG-13 style ‘crazy comedy on the most burning issue of the day — the equality of the sexes…or everything women would like to do to men,’ says Voizard. The movie’s working title is a takeoff on the ubiquitous warning: ‘Contient nudite, sexualite, violence et profanities.’

The episodic tv series proposal, Les Kouacs, is a drama about street kids who help other street kids. Voizard says talks are being held with a producer, and early response is highly positive.

Voizard is about to sign on with a big episodic tv series out of Toronto. Recent directing credits include the ’99 Parents Choice Award tv movie, Escape From Wildcat Canyon, produced by Telescene Film Group for Showtime Networks, and two episodes of the aac/Serendipity Point Films miniseries Cover Me, broadcast on cbc.

*Rightime options Delirium

Rightime Productions has optioned movie rights to the Douglas Cooper novel Delirium. Published in 1998 by Random House, the novel has emerged as a bit of a cult classic on u.s. campuses, and tells the story of an aging and domineering architect who receives the first chapter of an anonymously penned and hostile biography about him. Having lived by the edict ‘no life bears scrutiny,’ the old man decides to take deadly action against his biographer, only to discover his darkest secret is about to be revealed.

Rightime partners Michael Kronish and Robert Gervais are looking for an established Canadian screenwriter and director ‘with a vision,’ and plan to shoot by the end of next year. Gervais says the story is a great character piece and that an actor of the stature of Peter O’Toole or Donald Sutherland could play the lead.

The proposed budget is $1.2 million, plus the cost of talent. The producers hope to finance their company through a private placement and approach the public funding agencies on projects like Delirium.

The house is currently shooting Ceci n’est pas un film/This Is Not A Film:BV3, a documentary on pop band Bran Van 3000.

Rightime’s first drama effort is Angelique, a 23-minute biopic revisiting of the ‘true story’ of a black slave woman accused and convicted of setting fire to Montreal in 1734. The short, delivered earlier this year, was directed by Mike Jarvis based on a Peter Farbridge script, with Marilyne Afflack as Angelique.

Other Rightime credits include A Season of Change, sold to pbs, Vision tv, Knowledge Network and cfcf-tv, and a one-hour doc on baseball legend Jackie Robinson, sold to tqs, tvontario and Canal d.