Vancouver: After three years of political wrangling, stuntman/studio entrepreneur Danny Virtue should get the green light this month [January] to proceed with construction of Wildhorse Town, a large-scale set for period westerns.

Built on about 54 acres of the vast Skeetchestn Indian Reserve 30 minutes west of Kamloops on the TransCanada Highway, Wildhorse Town will feature camera-friendly saloons and shops as well as a bank, sheriff’s office, livery stable, community hall, ranch-style housing, railroad station, church and school.

‘We’re in the final throes of approvals,’ says Victoria Weller, film commissioner for the Thompson Okanagan Region, who predicts Wildhorse Town will bring in $30 million to $40 million per year in production spending to the Kamloops area. Right now, productions like Sean Penn’s The Pledge have left behind $1 million to $3 million per year in the area.

At press time, the Wildhorse location project still needed the blessing of the provincial ministries of Employment and Investment and Aboriginal Affairs, but a government spokesperson says a final decision about a ‘repayable contribution’ to the project (lingo for a loan) is due mid-January.

Weller, meanwhile, expects the western set to generate new business for the area’s existing locations.

Tranquille on the Lake is a former tuberculosis sanatorium on Kamloops Lake and offers producers 41 buildings for offices and production spaces. Six Mile Ranch features a marina and golf course. The Kamloops area even has a desert for productions that want to recreate Texas, says Weller.

Wildhorse Town will be a significantly bigger version of Virtue’s well-used Bordertown set – also suited to pioneering stories – in Maple Ridge.

Virtue also owns Virtue Studio Ranch (the one-time home of cbc series Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy) located at his home in Mission.

Kamloops is a three-hour drive or a 50-minute flight from Vancouver.

*Pushing the Limits

Syndicated anthology series The Outer Limits, once cancelled, is back in production with a seventh season at The Bridge Studios in Burnaby. Early last year, the series auctioned off its entire set inventory to fans.

Starting over, this group of 26 episodes wraps June 29.

Other series back in Vancouver include Seven Days, which migrated north last year and is in production with its third season until April 24.

Speaking of series that are mobile, Beyond Belief is shooting its next 13 episodes in Vancouver until mid-March. The series, executive produced by Dick Clark and produced locally by Lisa Richardson of Dogwood Pictures, hasn’t shot any episodes in two years and has about 30 episodes in the can already. Previously, Fox has aired the series whenever it needed to fill space, but it may get a regular slot this time around. Reruns air on The Sci-Fi Channel.

Hosted by Jonathan Frakes (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Belief is an hour-long anthology of five- to seven-minute vignettes of strange, Twilight Zone-esque stories. The host invites the audience to guess which of the stories is true and which fiction.

*Labor of love

Vancouver-made short film Mon Amour Mon Parapluie (My Love, My Umbrella) has been awarded a Bravo!fact grant and wrapped four days of production Jan. 8.

The contributors roster, meanwhile, is a who’s who of the new guard of indie filmmakers and other arty types on the West Coast.

According to the filmmakers, Mon Amour is inspired by black-and-white French postcards of the 1940s and tells the story of a vanquished love affair between a young woman and her symbolic lover – an umbrella. They call it a visual poem with minimal dialogue.

The b&w, 35mm film is written by and stars Tara Hungerford, is directed by Giada Dobrenzka (Post, which was made in the u.k.) and filmed by Gregory Middleton (Suspicious River, The Five Senses, Better Than Chocolate, Kissed).

Composer Nick Lloyd Webber (Post), son of Andrew Lloyd Webber, will fly in from London to score the music. Successful West Coast authors Douglas Coupland (Generation x, City of Glass) and William Gibson (Neuromancer, ‘cyberspace’) will provide cameos as will actor Derek de Lint (Poltergeist – The Series, The Unbearable Lightness of Being).

The film will be edited and co-associate produced by Mark Lemmon (waydowntown, Noroc, DaVinci’s Inquest), production designed by Michael Bjornson (Double Happiness, Lunch With Charles) and produced by Paul Armstrong (daytime, Exiles In Paradise).

Mon Amour is line produced by Maureen Prentice (Tempting Fate), production managed by Robin Chan, co-associate produced by Jennifer Neuman, and location managed by Michael Gazetas (Suspicious River).

*Saint pet

Peace Arch Entertainment of Vancouver is in production with 13 one hours of Animal Miracles with Alan Thicke, featuring the Growing Pains actor and onetime Vancouver talk show host.

The series, which premiered Dec. 11 on pax tv, tells the stories of ‘sometimes uncanny’ relationships that humans develop with animals. The series shoots in locations around the world.

Peace Arch owns worldwide rights to the show. Animal Miracles is the company’s second pax tv project in six months, says Peace Arch president Tim Gamble. Peace Arch recently completed production on the three Christy mows.

-www.pax.tv

-www.peacearch.net

*Movie high

Film and television program students at Templeton Secondary School in Vancouver are getting $35,000 and a new society to help them build the skills needed to get work in the movie business.

The grant from Industry Training and Apprenticeship Commission, an arm of the Ministry of Labour, goes to dreams – otherwise known as the Drama, Education and Media Society.

The students will create three videos to be used in BC Human Rights Commission television spots designed to address bullying based on sex, race and homophobia in schools.

Locals from the film industry will advise on the development of a dreams curriculum that covers project development, script writing, story boarding, direction and production. *