Veteran Toronto producer and international coproducer Chesler/Perlmutter Productions has been cheerfully exploiting ties to a little European partner with a big tax credit.

Company partner David Perlmutter says if you shoot in Luxembourg, it provides a tax credit ‘that works out to about 25% of what you spend’ while shooting in the Grand Duchy. In fact, Chesler/Perlmutter has shot seven productions in the tiny state.

One of these is the 90-minute feature drama Falling Through. Combine the unusual location with the fact that the producers banked the project via French bank Coficine Paris, and you have a ‘pretty unusual’ deal.

Starring Gordon Currie, Roy Scheider, Ekaterina Rednikova and Peter Weller, Falling Through is a France-Canada-Luxembourg coproduction with a Cdn$5-million (us$3.2-million) budget. Shot over four weeks in 1999 and released last year, the film also parlays the involvement of French coproducer Le Sabre and French broadcaster M6 into qualification for a French subsidy – which has a per project cap of FF1 million (us$142,000) – paid by the Centre National de la Cinematographie (cnc). Since two main purposes of the cnc are to promote France’s audiovisual industry and preserve its cinematic heritage, qualifying coproductions must fulfill those goals, and spend 30% of the budget in France. Falling Through employed some French nationals in the cast and many on the crew, and sent its negative to Paris for processing. Back in Canada for post-production, Falling Through’s Canadian pedigree qualified it for cavco (Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office) tax credits, which accounted for a portion of the budget. Canadian coproducers are Lewis Chesler and Perlmutter.

Not to be limited to financial incentives from continental Europe, Chesler/Perlmutter is also using the u.k. sale and leaseback to help finance what Perlmutter describes as ‘a new mystery wheel that we’ve developed for PaxNet in the u.s. and CanWest Global in Canada.’

Perlmutter says the three 90-minute films in the wheel will remind viewers of tv’s Colombo or MacMillan and Wife – ‘light mysteries, but not bloodthirsty.’ Each is a pilot movie-for-television with a distinct storyline. ‘If they’re successful,’ he says, ‘we’ll make continuing series based on the originals.’

The films are all Canada-u.k. coproductions, with Perlmutter as co-exec producer, Chesler producing and film financier Grosvenor Park as the u.k. coprod (Andrew Somper, exec producer). Each is budgeted in the us$3-million range. With the sale and leaseback accounting for between 8% and 10% of the budget, the balance of the financing comes from Canadian tax credits, PaxNet and foreign distrib Hallmark Entertainment.

The first spoke in the wheel is Murray Maguire m.e., which began shooting mid-March and follows the adventures of a medical examiner. Drama veteran Vic Sarin (Partition, Sea People) directs. Once it’s finished, Chesler/Perlmutter will head right into Breakfast With Dick and Dorothy, in which the pair of intrepid morning talk show co-hosts turn off their mikes and tie on their gumshoes. Canadian Eleanore Lindo (The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, Drop the Beat) is to helm. The third spoke in the mystery wheel is Isabella Rocks, to be directed by Michael Kennedy (Emily of New Moon, Made in Canada).