Montreal: Telescene Film Group has announced a record $148.7 million (us$102 million) production slate as well as a new output deal with German media company Tele-Munchen Group.

The slate includes new productions for Action Adventure Network worth us$55 million ($80.5 million), including: 22 new one-hour episodes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, coproduced with Coote/Hayes Productions and distributed by New Line Television; and 20 new hours of Matthew Blackheart: Monster Smasher, exec produced by Richard Donner.

Also included in the deal are four new aan movies/series pilots: Viking (to be coproduced with Europe), Witness to Fear (exec producer Clive Barker), Halcyon (Wolfgang Petersen) and Secret Life (Roland Joffe). aan pilots premier on u.s. dbs service DirecTv.

The new production slate extends over 18 months.

In the output deal, Tele-Munchen will pick up tv rights in German-speaking territories to the next eight aan pilots as well as a minimum of one aan series out of every two pilots which go to series. Tele-Munchen has also agreed to acquire six films.

Telescene exec vp Paul Painter says prefinancing arrangements cover between 65% and 90% of the new slate’s production costs.

New production at Telescene includes: 13 one-hour episodes of the music drama series Live Through This, commissioned by mtv; 26 half-hours of the live-action/animation series Door to Door, coproduced with France’s Tele Images Creation and presold to Family Channel in Canada; 21 new episodes of the ytv/Fox Family sitcom Big Wolf on Campus; and six new tv movies in the Jack Higgins Collection, budgeted at us$3 million ($4.4 million) apiece. The Higgins movies will be coproduced with Europe. Painter says three of the six will be shot in Montreal, with start-ups on two this fall.

Painter says current market conditions in Montreal have made it ‘very difficult’ putting the new production slate together. And while takeover talks with TVA Group did not pan out, apparently because of objections raised by parent company Groupe Videotron, talks with non-Canadian investors are day-to-day. ‘We are having discussions on a constant basis,’ he says.

TFG.B stock was trading at $4.80 on the TSE at Playback press time.

A recent analyst’s report projects a top line for Telescene in ’99/2000 of $64.5 million.