Montreal: BBR Productions’ first shoot as part of the L’Equipe Spectra group is Armistead Maupin’s Further Tales of the City, the third round for television of the author’s freaky stories of life and love in 1970s San Francisco. Showtime has acquired u.s. rights to the four-hour miniseries, which shoots here for 45 days starting May 23 through to July 4.

bbr president and producer Suzanne Girard says there’s a lot of interest on the part of Canadian broadcasters. ‘Thank god we kept the sets. Many of the lead and recurring characters are back.’

Leading players include Olympia Dukakis as the neighborhood’s rock-solid landlady, Laura Linney, Barbara Garrick and Canadian actors Jackie Burroughs in the role of the ancient Mother Mucca and Paul Hopkins, who plays a gay man unlucky in love.

Pierre Gang (Sous-Sol, Ichabod: A Legend of Sleepy Hollow) is directing. Serge Ladouceur is the dop, Louise Jobin is the art director and Francois Laplante is the costume designer. Supervising producer/pm is Josee Lacelle. John Buchan is casting out of Toronto and Elite Productions in Montreal is on the hunt for five-year-old Eurasian twins.

Girard and Kevin Tierney paired on the a&e/La Fete bio-pic P.T. Barnum and coproduced the second installment of More Tales, a multiple Primetime Emmy and Gemini Award nominee shot here in ’97. Last summer, Girard and Alliance Atlantis Communications coproduced the cbs/ctv war-crime drama Nuremberg, starring Alec Baldwin. More Tales is currently airing on Bravo!.

Girard and development producer Rebecca Yates are working on a turn-of-the-century movie project from Martin Barry. Barry is the writer/director of the hilarious National Film Board claymation/bug adventure Juke-Bar.

bbr has Canadian rights on Further Tales of the City; Hallmark Entertainment has international. bbr also has 30% of all post-recoupment revenues. The budget is $10.7 million.

* Croze, Romano star in Welterlin suspense

In the feature film Des Chiens dans la neige, Marie-Josee Croze (La Florida) plays Lucie, an almost-too-perfect, middle-class character who gets mixed up with the mob after bumping off chum Antoine in a fitful crime of passion. Call it karmic justice or simply modern movie logic, Lucie shakes off the murder and decides to chase a pile of money stashed away by the dead boyfriend, who was actually a compulsive liar and a doubling-dealing Mafioso crook.

Croze’s costars are Romano Orzari (Omerta iii, Burnt Eden) and French actor Jean-Philippe Ecoffey (La Reine Margot, Ma Vie en Rose), both of whom play mobsters competing for Antoine’s hidden money as well as Lucie’s affections.

A suspense or ‘polar’ as it’s called en francais, Des Chiens is budgeted at $2 million and is a France/Canada coproduction between Francois Pouliot of Montreal’s Yul Films and Eric Porcher of France’s Alteregro. The shoot is French director Michel Welterlin’s first feature. The director coscripted with Antoine Lacomblez, who also happens to play Antoine. Filming on the 24-day Montreal leg of the shoot wrapped April 20, with the action now moving to France. The dop is Yves Belanger.

Investors include Telefilm Canada and sodec. Films Lions Gate anticipates a February or March 2001 release.

In ’99, Pouliot and Films Cinepix coproduced Alain DesRochers’ feature debut La Bouteille. Lions Gate will distribute this summer.

Poulette works France

director Michel Poulette is on a five-city tour of France where he’ll present his two feature films, the Golden Reel-winning comedy Louis 19, le roi des ondes and the suspense La Conciergerie.

Released as Reality Show in France, Poulette says Louis 19’s box-office performance in France is (a distant) Canadian second only to Denys Arcand’s 1986 hit Le Declin de l’empire americain. Hollywood director Ron Howard remade Louis 19 in ’98 as Ed tv.

Poulette says he hopes to get another shot at directing movies and has acquired the rights to La Chair disparue, a spy novel by Jean-Jacques Pelletier. Pierre Billon is adapting for the big screen.

The director’s first English-track shoot was Bonanno: A Godfather’s Story, the highly rated, five-hour Showtime miniseries produced by Kevin Tierney and La Fete Productions. It is set to air on Global Television Network and Reseau tva.

Poulette’s tour opened the last week of April in the northern French city of Lille at Rencontres du Cinema Quebecois, with additional dates this month in Paris, Tours, Biarritz and Carpentras.

* Rollerball, Willie in prep

Preproduction is underway on Rollerball, the remake inspired by Norman Jewison’s brutal and prescient 1975 United Artists movie on the nature of violence as entertainment. John McTiernan is helming the shoot, with prep extending to July 28. Principal photography starts July 31 and goes to early November.

Beau St-Clair, Chuck Roven and Jewison (The Hurricane) are producing for Cub Three Productions. Michael Tadross is exec producing and Jacky Lavoie (Battlefield Earth) is pm. Art directors are Michael Devine and Jean Carriere. The cinematographer is Dennis Bradford. mgm is the distrib.

Other stcvq-crewed films in preproduction for late May starts are Popsicle, creme glacee et autres consolations and the Reseau tva miniseries Willie.

Popsicle is a feature from first-time director Julie Hivon and producer Marcel Giroux of GPA Films (La Liste Noir).

Production house Avanti Cine Video (Cher Olivier, Un gars une fille) and director Jean Beaudin start 10 weeks of shooting on Willie May 29. The production is a dramatization of the life and times of Quebec country music legend Willie Lamothe. Michel Proulx is art director. Luc Wiseman, Jean Claude Lesperance and Jean Bissonnette are producing.