Feature film Max and the Lioness will move production to the Mick Phillips St. Station Casino in Winnipeg June 4-6, the first production ever to do so. A coprod between Winnipeg’s Buffalo Gal Pictures, Montreal’s Les Film de l’Isle and Moncton’s Transmar Films, the $3.2-million ‘twisted psycho thriller’ follows a couple on the road in a story of complicated relationships that culminates in murder.

The casino scene ‘involves huge stages and thousands of people. It’s an integral scene, a huge part of the film,’ says Shawn Watson, producer for Buffalo Gal. ‘In the film, it’s somewhere near Yellowknife on an aboriginal reserve and no such casino exists. It’s an important part of the film; we meet a central character in the movie in that scene and slowly unfold the drama about to take place in the casino.’

The production began filming April 23 in Moncton, which also stands in for Quebec City, and will wrap the New Brunswick leg of the shoot mid-May.

The Winnipeg shoot runs June 4-17, with post concluding in time for the November delivery date. Locations around Winnipeg double for Thunder Bay, Yellowknife and even the Prairies. ‘It’s visually important to the film to feel like it’s taking place across the country,’ says Watson.

The French distributor for theatrical is K FILMS Amerique; an English distributor has not yet been settled on. Max and the Lioness has been presold to Superchannel, TMN-The Movie Network and Showcase.

Les Films de l’Isle producer on the project is Ian Boyd and Transmar producer is Rodrigue Jean, who is also writer/director on the project. Buffalo Gal’s Phyllis Laing and Boyd are exec producers.

The project has received funding from Telefilm Canada, Film New Brunswick, SODEC, Manitoba Film and Sound and provincial tax credits from all three provinces used in the shoot.

NSI puts features first

Poor Super Man, a graduate of the National Screen Institute’s Features First program, will commence shooting in Winnipeg May 7, with production scheduled to wrap June 8.

Kim Todd, ex of Credo Entertainment in Winnipeg, is attached as exec producer. Her company, Original Pictures of Winnipeg, is coproducing the feature with realtime films of Edmonton.

Brad Fraser, playwright of the original stage-bound Poor Super Man, is attached to direct and has adapted the screenplay.

‘I’m proud that Poor Super Man is going to be the first picture that Original Pictures makes,’ says Todd. ‘Poor Super Man is a very moving love story and a provocative script. Brad is an active member of the gay community. What appealed is that the love story is wonderful, and the fact that it is a gay love story made no difference to me. There’s always a desire to label; we strongly think that ‘love story’ is the pigeonhole.

‘The translation from stage to film is like translating it into a different language,’ says Todd. ‘In film, the camera brings you so close, you have such an intimate relationship with the characters. The audience expects the characters to be natural and real, so they have to be fleshed out and made natural. That was the change.’

The production originally had a late winter/early spring shoot scheduled, ‘knowing that’s a slow time,’ says Todd. ‘But with the SAG strike that’s been inverted, everyone’s trying to shoot before the strike. It’s like having gone through the looking glass.’

TMN-The Movie Network and Corus Premium Television share first window, with ChumCity holding free TV rights. Montreal’s Film Tonic is on board as distrib.

Original also has two television series underway, both of which have secured licence fees but have yet to complete financing.

Guinevere Jones, a 13-part, half-hour tween series licenced to YTV, is about a high school girl who is the reincarnation of the Arthurian queen.

Emma, a coproduction with Montreal’s CineGroupe, is a 26-episode, half-hour, live-action/animation kids series based on the book There’s A Rainbow In My Closet and licensed by CBC.

Another full-length feature developed through the Features First program recently wrapped principal photography. Inertia, from Winnipeg writer/director Sean Garrity and producer Brendon Sawatzky, finished its Winnipeg shoot April 11.

Sawatzky says the goal of the film is ‘to show people that are in relationships that are failing and trying to continue with them. It’s like an anti-romantic comedy.’

Preparation for the film included six months of improvising with the actors – ‘things that would happen in a typical relationship, just people talking and doing things,’ says Sawatzky, ‘[Garrity] had hours and hours of that on video and he took the best of all of it. Now the actors carry that into these roles.’

Wrapping up

The Kevin DeWalt exec-produced production dominating Winnipeg, Patrick Swayze’s Without A Word, is scheduled to wrap at the end of April. The dramatic feature, which also has the distinction of being the first film Minds Eye Pictures has ever bought to Winnipeg, stars Swayze and wife Lisa Niemi.

Tippy toes

Winnipeg filmmaker Vonnie von Helmolt has a 90-minute ballet special in the works. Inspired by a dance adaptation of the classic horror tale which the Royal Winnipeg Ballet produces every year, the special, Dracula – The Ballet, will be directed by local hero Guy Maddin.

Von Helmolt is currently shopping around for a distributor for the show, which she is confident will be a ‘real blockbuster’ with a long life.

CBC has provided a production licence and secured first-window rights. Funding from the CTF for the $1.6-million special is also in place.

Another of Von Helmont’s projects in development, The Accidental Assassin, is a feature film about ‘an accident-prone woman who accidentally kills this guy who turns out to have been pinpointed for a hit by the mob.’

Meeting in the middle

A Wilderness Station, a murder mystery set in Manitoba circa 1850, is currently filming in and around Winnipeg, with May 11 scheduled as the feature film’s wrap date.

The project, from Montreal’s CineGroupe, Winnipeg’s Credo Entertainment and Vancouver-based Gregorian Films, was written by Charles K. Pitts and Anne Wheeler and is being produced by Bill Gray. Pitts, Credo’s Derek Mazur and CineGroupe’s Marie-Claude Beauchamp and Jacques Pettigrew are exec producing.

Directed by Wheeler (Better Than Chocolate) from a story by Alice Munro, the film stars Brendan Fehr (Roswell, The Forsaken), Caroline Dhavernas (Out Cold) and Corey Sevier (Little Men). The action starts with 18-year-old Annie stumbling into the Fort Garry trading post half-mad after wandering through the wilderness for several days, claiming to have murdered her husband, a 20-year-old pioneer. The murder mystery unfolds through intercepted letters to her sister, wherein Annie describes the circumstances leading to the death.

Funding for the $4.5-million project comes from Telefilm Canada, the CF3, Manitoba Film and Sound, the Independent Production Fund and federal and provincial tax credits. Distribution will be handled by Christal Films and Lions Gate.

Bug-eyed

Punchbuggy, a one-hour doc currently in development at Edmonton-based Souleado Entertainment, is ‘a lighthearted look at the most loved car on earth,’ according to producer Connie Edwards. ‘The most popular ‘beetle’ of the ’60s did not come from Liverpool,’ she says.

‘The Bug started as the Volkswagen, literally the people’s car. There was a desire that everyone could have a car that was affordable and easy on gas. The Bug was designed in the ’30s, but couldn’t find a backer in the Depression. But the new German chancellor, being Hitler, decided it was a great thing, so it was in fact built.’

Despite this beginning, the VW Beetle is most closely associated with the values of another time, the ’60s, Edwards says. ‘The Bug is a counterpoint to the big fins of the late ’50s and early ’60s out of Detroit. The Bug scuttles along. It was a time of peace, love and rock and roll, and people looking for simple times. And this Bug is simple. It seemed to just capture the imagination of the people at that time.’

And this fascination endures. ‘People have continued their love affair with the Bug. There are literally hundreds of websites, and fanatics have swap meets and still look for parts for these [decades-old] cars.

‘What’s fascinating to me is that we hit the late ’90s and it started all over again. There was this wave of nostalgia. Suddenly there’s a new Bug and whole new generation of kids with a passion for these cars. What is it about this car that makes people buggy? It’s just one of those interesting things.’ *