Vancouver: Fresh from their Academy Award parties late last month, previous Oscar winners Al Pacino, Hilary Swank and Robin Williams will be in Vancouver April 19 to June 20 to shoot the Warner Bros.-distributed Insomnia (Alcon Entertainment).

This is a psychological thriller with serious Hollywood muscle behind it. Not only does its cast boast the big hardware, but Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney and Charlie Schlissel (Red Planet) are executive producers.

Three Kings alumni Paul Witt and Ed McDonnell reunite as producers with the team of Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson from Dude, Where’s My Car? (Quit snickering, Dude was closing in on $47 million in domestic box office last month.)

Chris Nolan (of Sundance winner Memento) directs.

And it has already been produced as a 1997 Norwegian film, also entitled Insomnia.

The premise: kind of a bad killer-good killer story. While in pursuit of a murderer in Alaska, a detective accidentally kills his partner and tries to cover it up by pinning the death on the murderer being tracked. Except…the bad killer is a witness and the story flip-flops. Who is the cat and who is the mouse? Who will be exposed first? And when can anyone get any shut-eye in the land of 24-hour sun?

The Insomnia stars, meanwhile, may meet other Hollywood luminaries in the halls of the favored-by-the-glitterati Sutton Place Hotel for at least one day.

The feature 24 Hours, a negative pickup for Columbia Pictures, wraps production April 20 in Vancouver. Charlize Theron, Courtney Love and Kevin Bacon star in the kidnapping-with-a-twist storyline.

US TV, pip pip

Warner Bros. and WBTV are producing The Young Person’s Guide to Becoming a Rock Star, an American series pilot with a distinctly English accent.

Executive producer Brian Elsley is a Brit and has created the characters on which the series is based. Could be some Channel 4 money in it. Writer John Riggi is American as is star Oliver Hudson (brother of Kate, son of Goldie). The rest of the cast and crew are largely Canadian.

And, curiously, Warner is disinclined to be publicly linked with the project, according to one source. If the series about a rock group’s quest for fame goes into production it will be this summer when, presumably, writers and/or actors are picketing productions. That is, of course, if this is a recipe for strike-proof production.

Wolves at the door

HRT (which stands for Hazard Response Team), a pilot for Columbia TriStar and CBS, is a one-hour drama with few other details until the network brass give the greenlight or the heave-ho. Kim Hawthorne (Along Came a Spider) stars in the pilot that shoots until April 5.

Less mysterious, meanwhile, is Wolf Lake, another pilot for CBS. The one-hour drama by CBS Productions stars Lou Diamond Phillips as a sheriff in a town where the local wolves seem to be becoming more and more menacing – missing hikers and the like. Also starring is Stacy Edwards (The Next Best Thing) and Graham Greene (Dances with Wolves). Production runs until April 10.

Naughty bits

Bardel Animation made Mr. Dink, the company’s saucy foray into Flash production for the Internet, for atomfilms.com (which has since been acquired by shockwave.com). But the series of shorts has also been picked up by CTV’s Comedy Network. The intrepid nudie stars in an initial cycle of four six-minute shorts that began airing in late February. A second round of four episodes awaits the go-ahead from atomfilms.

In the meantime, Bardel’s first music video for Universal Freak, an alternative rock band in Vancouver, is up for a Westcoast Music Award for best director May 13.

And service work continues on DreamWorks’ latest animated feature Spirit: Stallion of Cimmaron, the story of a horse with an indomitable spirit.

The wild side

The fifth season of Champions of the Wild, by Vancouver’s Omni Film Productions, has its directors traipsing the globe in search of stories.

Chris Aikenhead will be in Belize to film an episode on manatees (the lovable sea cow) and Brazil to study golden lion tamarinds. Andrew Gardner and crew are in production in Kenya for zebras. In February, Gary Marcuse traveled to Russia to film Siberian tigers. Series producer and director Chris Bruyere was in Uganda last January to film hippopotamuses.

The new season of Champions begins airing this fall on Discovery, while last season is currently on Knowledge Network and will be on SCN starting in May.

According to Omni, the award-winning Champions is one of the longest running documentary series in Canada and airs in 20 countries.

Notes

Vancouver’s Peace Arch Entertainment is in post on its second feature (since Cadence in 1991). Now and Forever, a drama about the relationship of a white girl and a native boy as they grow up, was shot in Saskatchewan last year. It stars Mia Kirshner (Love and Human Remains), Theresa Russell (Black Widow), Adam Beach (Smoke Signals) and Gordon Tootoosis (Reindeer Games).

* On March 31, Vancouver’s Venturetainment Capital Corporation’s feature doc Cougar Crossings was screened at the MIPDOC in Cannes and was rebroadcast in Canada on CTV. The feature, seven years in the making, tells the story of two orphaned cougar cubs.

* Lions Gate International Televi-sion, a division of Vancouver-based Lions Gate Entertainment, fillets the restaurant industry in the one-hour comedic reality special When Chefs Attack, which replays footage from the world’s scariest restaurants. The special shows what goes on behind the kitchen door and is produced by L.A. division Termite Art Productions for the UPN network.

* Last month, Vancouver talent agent Pacific Artists signed a strategic alliance with L.A. management/production company Handprint Entertainment, a deal the local company expects to create Hollywood opportunities for its clients. Handprint represents Jennifer Lopez, Angie Harmon and Nicole Kidman, who is expected to star in the Handprint-produced adaptation of The Sixteen Pleasures.

* Post Modern Sound has opened what it calls the most advanced mixing theatre in Vancouver. Part of a 10,000-square-foot facility expansion, the mixing theatre features an all-virtual Euphonix System 5 mixing console and was designed by Acoustic Dimensions of New York. *