In the last year alone, GFT Entertainment produced 15 feature films, 11 of which were coproductions, and in all rung in a total budget of $136 million.

In 1999, the Toronto-based company shot 11 features, but this coming year puts a hitch in the ascending production numbers with only five projects in development, almost all of which will be shot in Ontario.

‘I’m burnt out,’ admits gft president Gary Howsam. ‘It’s too much – We have a dozen people who work here and to close financing on an independent movie is not easy. Times it by 15. This year we want to focus on less commerce, fewer projects and hopefully a higher ratio of bigger films.’

Howsam also recognizes this year as a ‘good time to stop making indie films with the (withholding) tax issues and strikes. We’re better off to sit back and watch the shit hit the fan.’

Projects on the 2001-development slate include the suspense thriller Murderer, written and directed by James Drearden (Fatal Attraction).

A coproduction with Thomas Headman of Europa Pictures (u.k.), the film is budgeted at roughly $20 million and will likely be shot in Toronto in April, ‘before the sag strike,’ says Howsam.

Based on the Patricia Highsmith novel, the story takes place in 1950s Pennsylvania, where mystery ensues after a middle-aged bookstore owner’s wife leaves him for another man and is shortly after found strangled in a train station.

Helga: A True Story is a feature comedy to be cowritten by and star Matt Frewer (Sherlock Holmes mow series).

Budgeted at roughly $6 million and to be shot in Toronto in June, Helga follows the journey of a big-boned girl from Bavaria who loses her family, moves to America and makes it into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

The film, to be shot in Alberta and Saskatchewan, went into prep last year, but shut down in March because the financing didn’t come through.

Allegiance, a.k.a. Battle for America, written by John Sheppard and directed by Sidney Furie (18 Wheels of Justice), is a coproduction with Jamie Brown of Studio 8 (u.k.).

Budgeted at roughly $30 million, the film is to go to camera by the summer, but, once again, all will depend on the sag strike. ‘We still don’t know what a sag strike will mean if we have an actra contract,’ Howsam says.

Allegiance is a big action movie about a small cadre of fanatics in the American armed forces who overthrow the u.s. government by staging a violent military coup.

Wedlock, written and directed by Timothy Bond (Outer Limits) and jointly produced with Tapestry Films, tells the story of a couple on the brink of divorce whose destiny takes a turn when the husband has his son fake-kidnapped as a way to extort money from his wife.

Budgeted at roughly $6 million, the film will shoot in Toronto in the spring.

The Limit, written and directed by Lewin Webb, head of production at gft, is the lowest budget of the group and, in fact, the lowest budget film ever to come out of gft, ringing in at $3 million. A suspense thriller, the film will either be shot in Hamilton or Toronto.

‘If we shoot in Hamilton, we get a bump on the Ontario tax credits, but if we shoot in Toronto we save on the transportation and hotel rooms,’ says Howsam.

*Alliance Atlantis bolsters film slate with haute talent

Alliance Atlantis has been busy over the last couple of months signing some of Canada’s and Hollywood’s hottest young talent to a handful of its coming productions.

Karen Walton (Ginger Snaps) has been picked up to adapt Michael Turner’s (Hard Core Logo) novel The Pornographer’s Poem for the screen.

The Pornographer’s Poem is the tale of a 1970s teenager raging against the delusion of his middle-class life. He takes a film camera in one hand and the so-called sexual revolution in the other and sets off on a desperate search for his place in a world seemingly incapable of honesty.

Set in Vancouver, the story is told from the perspective of an unnamed pornographic filmmaker.

Walton describes the story as, ‘a riotous, gut-wrenching trip, a sort of sexual, 1970s Trainspotting. It’s an unforgiving charge at the sacred cow of youth.’

The film, to be produced by Alliance Atlantis Motion Picture Production, is budgeted at roughly $10 million.

Kristy Swanson (Dude, Where’s My Car?), Brandy Ledford (My 5 Wives), Stephen Baldwin (The Flintstones) and Cameron Daddo (Hope Island) were signed in early December to star in the Alliance Atlantis/Le Monde Entertainment feature Zebra Lounge.

The feature, which went to camera in Toronto Dec. 7, is being directed by Kari Skogland (Men with Guns).

The film is an erotic thriller about a husband and wife who, dissatisfied with their banal, suburban existence, take a walk on the wild side with a seemingly normal, ‘swinging’ couple they meet at the Zebra Lounge.

Zebra Lounge is the third film to begin principal photography this quarter from Alliance Atlantis/Le Monde.

Protection, starring Stephen Baldwin and Peter Gallagher (American Beauty) is now in post and The Watchtower, starring Tom Berenger, began shooting at the end of November.

Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Talented Mr. Ripley) has been cast in the title role in director Richard Kwietniowski’s second feature Owning Molony.

The film is produced by Andras Hamori and Alliance Atlantis Motion Picture’s Seaton McLean through Hamori’s H2O Motion Pictures.

Based on Stung, Gary Ross’ best-selling account of the largest single-handed bank fraud in Canadian history, Owning Molony tells the story of an unassuming bank manager who quietly embezzled millions of dollars over a year-and-a-half to feed his gambling habit.

The film will be produced in conjunction with Edward R. Pressman Film Corporation.

Production is set to begin mid-March on location in Toronto and Atlantic City.

Owning Molony will be the third film greenlit by Alliance Atlantis since Hamori set up his H2O banner in May 2000. The 51st State starring Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Carlyle, and directed by Ronny Yu, recently completed production; and Morvern Callar, starring Samantha Morton and to be directed by Lynne Ramsey (Ratcatcher) begins production early this year.

*Good Earth brings Great Rivers to Discovery

Toronto-based producer Good Earth Productions, creator of the long-running Discovery Channel series Great Canadian Parks, re-emerges with the launch of Great Canadian Rivers, which premiered Jan. 1, 2001 on Discovery.

Narrated by actor/musician Tom Jackson (The Longhouse Tales) and filmed in High Definition, the series profiles 13 of Canada’s greatest rivers chosen by Good Earth and representing the country’s natural and cultural heritage.

Each half-hour episode focuses on one river, form the Coppermine River in the nwt/Nunavut and British Columbia’s Stikine, Fraser and Gataga rivers, to Nova Scotia’s Margaree River.

‘Over the course of the series you’re going to learn more about this country and how it was formed. It also teaches you that the rivers not only shaped the land, they shaped our history,’ says Jackson.

Former Global news anchor Deborah Burgess produced the series with associate producer Kristen Colle, executive producer Mitch Azaria, and co-exec producer and dop Ihor Macijiwsky (The Sexual Century/Pornography).

Burgess is also attached as writer/director, along with Christine Alevizakis, Barry Davis, David Mortin and Colle.

The series will also be seen on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and Discovery Channel (us-hd).

Good Earth Productions was formed in 1993 by a group of Canadian journalists and has since produced programs for every major television network in Canada and many of the major networks in the u.s.

In addition to Great Canadian Rivers, Good Earth’s Historylands, a 13-part doc series on national historic sites, returns to History Television for its fourth season. Great Canadian Parks this year concludes its fifth season on Discovery.

The prodco has received funding from the Millennium Partnership Program to create a two-hour tv special called Canada’s National Parks at the Millennium.

*Global Villagers sheds light on volunteerism

After spending all of 2000 in production, The Global Villagers helps kick off 2001, the International Year of the Volunteer, with a Jan. 3 launch on Vision TV.

The five-part, half-hour series is produced by Dawn Deme (The Fifth Estate) of Villagers Media Productions in Toronto and directed and shot by her husband Steven Deme (Project Millennium). The Global Villagers explores the first-hand experiences and motivations of Canadian international volunteer workers, new and seasoned, and features their work in such countries as Jordan, Bangladesh, Uganda, Nigeria and Ecuador.

‘The idea for the series starts from what the public generally gets about impoverished countries – the starving child image or development jargon-ease no one understands,’ says Dawn Deme.

Sponsored by seven faith-based non-governmental organizations, the series, budgeted at roughly $35,000 per episode, is the result of one year of planning which took director Steven Deme and an assistant to the offices of 27 Canadian ngos to interview development workers about their experience in the field.

‘They’re the missing link. They have been living heroic lives,’ says Dawn Deme. For example, world-renowned children’s activist Craig Kielburger is featured in one episode. At the age of 12 he took on the child labor issue and now, at 19, he heads up Free the Children International.

Each episode also features a profile of the country in which the volunteers are working.

The series, produced in association with the Canadian International Development Agency, is hosted by anti-racism activist Denise Campbell.

Magic Lantern Distribution is handling the educational distribution.

*Petty returns with new health talk show

Dini Petty returns to the airwaves in February as host of the new Heart & Stroke Health Show.

Featuring real-life Canadian survivor stories, the new talk-show series, which was developed by the Heart and Stroke Foundation, will air weekly on Global from Feb. 4 through to Aug. 26.

Celebrity guests on the series include stroke victim Walter Gretzky, figure skater Isabelle Brasseur, who suffers from a childhood heart condition, and comedian Mike Bullard.

Petty will also talk to doctors, psychologists, and health activists and share diet and cooking tips from experts, including heart-healthy cookbook author Bonnie Stern and well-known nutritionist Rosie Schwartz.

Other topics of discussion related to heart disease and stroke include restarting your sex life, children who suffer strokes, pattern of disease occurrence among different ethnic groups and cutting-edge pharmaceuticals and surgical techniques.*