Montreal: Documentary producer Catherine Mullins of Green Lion Productions is in production on the Sony HD shoot A Bridge to Mars (working title), licensed by Discovery Canada, TVOntario, Knowledge Network, SCN and Canal D. The house is also in development on A Community at the Crossroads – As seen through the eyes of Dr. Jane McGillivray, a one-hour doc for the Women’s Television Network on the crisis among the Innu children of Sheshatshiu in Labrador.

This summer, after an initial sequence at the University of New Brunswick, the Green Lion crew, director Oleg Gjerstad and DOP David De Volpi will chronicle some 50 scientists on Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic as they prepare for an eventual human mission to Mars. The expedition is led by NASA and includes several of the world’s expert planetary researchers.

The Haughton Crater on Devon is the place on earth deemed to most resemble the planet Mars, and the assembled team has definite astronaut aspirations, says the producer.

The doc follows three young Canadian scientists: Darlene Lim, a paleolimnologist who examines potential life forms in extreme environments; Stephen Braham, a physicist, mathematician and communications specialist; and Gordon Osinski, a geologist whose research into the geology of impact craters on Earth will help Mars travelers anticipate conditions on the Red Planet.

NASA plans to send twin Rovers to Mars in 2003, with a human mission a possibility within 10 to 20 years.

Other sequences will be filmed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, and possibly at next year’s Mars Society Conference, says Mullins (The Human Race, Untangling the Mind: The Legacy of Dr. Heinz Lehmann).

Additional funding for the $450,000 doc comes from Rogers Cable Network Fund, the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, SODEC, Telefilm Canada and the Canadian Television Fund.

In A Community at the Crossroads, director Gjerstad profiles the perspective and work of the brave Dr. McGillvrary, who made headlines recently when she closed her practise in the isolated community of Sheshatshiu after 10 years, saying she could no longer work in a "culture of addiction," where parental neglect has resulted in rampant gasoline-sniffing among Innu children.

"Jane believes parents have to take responsibility for their children and stop trying to put the focus on more government funding, which she describes as a dangerous diversion," says the producer. "She acknowledges the wrongdoings of the governments of the 1950s and 1960s, and sees this "white guilt" as getting in the way of real solutions.

"Her primary concern is for the children, which overrides all other political and cultural considerations."

Mullins successfully pitched the one-hour project to WTN’s Through Her Eyes strand. She says the $5,000 in development money will trigger more development funds, with the hope production funds will become available later this fall.

Clarke directs

Christmas with JD

Malcolm Clarke is the director of the new Chris Eberts Productions movie Christmas with JD, the story of a troubled young man played by DJ Qualls (Cherry Falls, The New Guy) who is obsessed by the Holden Caulfield character in The Catcher in the Rye.

The film’s narrative changes from the unhappy rich kid at a military academy to a road movie adventure when Quall’s character takes off to New York with a female friend played by Rachel Blanchard (Clueless, Sugar & Spice) in search of the reclusive author J.D. Salinger.

Both actors starred in the DreamWorks teen box-office hit Road Trip.

"DJ Qualls is definitely one of the hot, upcoming actors," says producer Chris Eberts. "He’s coming out in a new Barry Sonnenfeld movie [Big Trouble, produced for Disney]. We feel very lucky to have him, and if we’re real lucky we’re going to be coming out after [Big Trouble] and he’ll be a star."

Blanchard’s latest flick is Joel Silverman’s Nailed, playing opposite Harvey Keitel.

U.S. writer/actor Sean Kanan scripted Christmas with JD and also stars.

Lions Gate Films will release the film in the U.S. and internationally.

Clarke, originally from the U.K. and now based in Montreal, is an award-wining documentary director (You Don’t Have to Die, The Life and Death of Steve Biko) who has turned to directing and writing feature films. He directed the Sony Classic/Avenue Pictures movie Voices from a Locked Room and has penned feature screenplays for Kevin Costner, Joe Estherhas, Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer. He is currently working on a project called Mustang Sally as well as Dancing With Giants (The Life of Tom Thumb), the latter for Sid Sheinberg and Steven Spielberg.

Eberts produced the ’98 feature Woman Wanted and the Universal box-office hit The Watcher with Keanu Reeves. He’s scheduled to shoot the action-adventure film Half Past Dead in Bulgaria and Budapest early this summer. Christmas with JD is budgeted at $4 million.

Win some, lose some

While Paramount Pictures in association with cofinancer Disney-based Spyglass Entertainment and producers Edward Zwick and Lynda Obst are in town prepping for a mid-April start on the Stephen Gaghan psycho-thriller Abandon, another major motion picture project has been canceled, or at least suspended for the foreseeable future.

Preprod on the US$80-million sci-fi film A Sound of Thunder, from director Renny Harlin and producers Eli Samaha of Franchise Pictures and Nicolas Clermont of Filmline International, was abruptly halted 10 days ago when the movie’s lead, Pierce Brosnan, and the distributor asked for a rewrite, eliminating any hope of wrapping filming by July 1, says shoot’s UPM Micheline Garant.

Montreal has already lost K-19: The Widowmaker, the Harrison Ford submarine drama, relocated to Toronto when the producers claimed they couldn’t find the right studio setup, and the family film Stuart Little II, which is limiting location filming to two U.S. cities.

The city can thank Paramount. The studio is also bankrolling the US$90-million Phil Alden Robinson spy-action thriller The Sum of All Fears, which is shooting in various locations and at Cite du Cinema/ TechnoParc. It’s produced by Soaf Films and stars Ben Affleck.

Abandon stars Dawson Creek’s Katie Holmes, with Christina Kontos on board as PM. Shooting goes from mid-April to mid-June.

Gaghan (Dawson’s Creek) is nominated for an Oscar for best screenwriter for the USA Films drug-wars thriller Traffic, produced by Zwick.

New STCVQ film action in preproduction includes the Philippe Haas feature The Lathe of Heaven from producer Marc Winemaker, with DOP Pierre Mignot and art director Sylvain Gingras on board for the Cine Cite Montreal shoot, and the TV movie Hysteria, from LS Productions producer Claude Castravelli and exec producer Patricia Clifford.

Cite-Amerique and Box TV of the U.K. are prepping the miniseries Dice for a late April start, while VZS Montreal Productions makes a return engagement for Their Last Chance, directed by Mike Robb. Randy Sutter is producing in association with Peter Sadowski and Danielle Rohrbach is PM. Start date is April 2.

City of Montreal film commissioner Andre Lafond says the looming U.S. strike action has made this year the most unpredictable of the last 20, adding some of the action may return by year’s end if the strike doesn’t materialize or, also unlikely, is short-lived. Meanwhile, Montreal’s foreign-shoot projection for 2001 could be cut by $300 million or more. *