Shaftesbury Films was a big winner in this spring’s LFP round of financing with at least four hot new projects, but an oversubscribed EIP has left the producer dangling on at least one new MOW.

Scar Tissue, which received more than $450,000 in LFP funding, was omitted from the EIP envelope, leaving Shaftesbury to look for alternative financing.

The MOW, in development with the CBC, is based on the Michael Ignatieff book about a family battling Alzheimer’s Disease.

Dennis Foon is scripting the $3-million project, with Eric Till attached to direct and R.H. Thomson set to star.

Christina Jennings is producing and Oasis has international distribution.

Among roughly 30 projects in development, greenlit productions going forward include The Aladdin Project for CTV.

Cocreated by Jennings and Peter Lauterman (North of 60), the 13-part, hour-long sci-fi-style series is a coproduction with CTV-owned Landscape Entertainment.

‘It’s a story about genetic engineering gone horribly awry,’ says Jennings, who shares an executive producer credit with Bob Cooper. The series follows a team of young genetic engineers as they troubleshoot their way out of potentially explosive dilemmas.

‘It’s like X-Files, but it’s not science fiction,’ she says.

Lauterman is the show runner with Jason Sherman aboard his writing team. Directors have yet to be announced.

The series is set to shoot all over Ontario beginning this summer. Each episode is budgeted at just over $1 million, none of which was supplied through the BCE/CTV benefits package.

Installments five and six of Shaftesbury’s mystery franchise for CTV have also been greenlit.

Based on the book series by Gail Bowen, Killing Spring and Verdict in Blood see recurring character Joanne Kilbourn, played by Wendy Crewson, solve yet another two murder mysteries.

Killing Spring sees Kilbourn taking a semester at journalism school, where she ends up investigating student killings and the dean’s suicide.

Verdict in Blood has Kilbourn making a mini-doc on a female judge who’s ultimately found brutally murdered.

Steven Williams (Milgaard) is directing both MOWs, which will start shooting in Toronto at the end of June for eight weeks.

They are slated to air in spring 2002.

The first four parts of the series have been sold to Lifetime (U.S.).

Season two of Screech Owls has also been greenlit for another 13 half-hours for YTV.

Teh series is adapted from some of the books by Roy McGregor; David Cole (Cold Squad) is heading the story team, and at least one episode this season will be shot in Ottawa, where the characters go in search of ghosts.

Season two will begin airing in September.

Discovery (U.S.) has bought the first two seasons.

Further down the pipeline, the prodco is in development with cowriters Mina Shum (Double Happiness) and Foon on the feature film Long Life, a copro with Raymond Massey.

Set in Vancouver and starring Sandra Oh, the film tells the story of a 13-year-old girl who attempts to improve the life of her overworked and underpaid mother through Chinese magic.

She casts three spells that spin off into three main storylines.

The film is being supported by the CBC and will be 50-50 Cantonese and English

Shum is directing the $3-million project, which producer Jennings says will likely go to camera in July.

Odeon has expressed interest in Canadian rights.

The prodco is also in development with the CBC on a miniseries about the parallel lives of Ernest Hemingway and Canadian scribe Morley Callaghan in the 1920s.

Set over a three-year period, the 2 x 2-hour project, budgeted at roughly $8 million, is being written by Malcolm MacRury (Man Without a Face).

The series will shoot in Toronto and Paris.

On the large-format front, Shaftesbury is currently in production on Straight Up, a 40-minute, US$5-million film for the Smithsonian about the history of vertical flight.

Dave Douglas is attached as writer/director, with Shaftesbury principal Jonathan Barker producing.

It is being shot all over the world, including Chile, Africa, Japan and the U.S.

Wandering minstrels

Toronto prodco Cohen Siblings has emerged from under the radar with The Travellers: This Land is Your Land, the opening film for the recent Toronto Jewish Film Festival and the closer for the following Montreal and Vancouver Jewish Film Festivals.

The feature documentary, a copro with the National Film Board, celebrates the Canadian musical pioneers The Travellers, focusing on the band’s early years as Canada’s groundbreaking folk music stars.

Produced by Shari Cohen and the NFB’s Karen King, and directed by Robert Cohen (Atom Egoyan: Road to Elsewhere), the film, which made its world premiere at the Toronto Jewish fest on April 26, is set to air on History Television in late September.

Another big Cohen Siblings doc with festival appeal is The Big Show, a behind-the-scenes account of last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Airing on CBC on Sept. 5, the doc, budgeted at $750,000, follows a handful of filmmakers through the festival experience. Classic moments in the doc include getting squished in an elevator with Piers Handling, Alec Baldwin and Sarah Jessica Parker, to following Joel Schumacher from Hollywood to Toronto with his gritty boot-camp film Tigerland.

The doc, a two-hour special, also takes a comical look at the festival’s 25 years in existence.

Robert Cohen and Robin Neinstein direct, with Shari Cohen producing.

Meantime, the company is in development with Life Network on Apartners, a six-part series that follows people in location-challenged relationships. For example, the series follows two estranged parents – neither of whom has a fixed address – who meet at airports to exchange their child.

Hoob-nobbing

Decode Entertainment and coproduction partner The Jim Henson Company have hit the Canadian marketplace with preschool series The Hoobs in a recent sale to TVOntario.

The transatlantic production, commissioned by Channel 4 in the U.K., is the country’s largest preschool order to date, consisting of 250 half-hours.

One hundred and twenty-five episodes were sold to TVO to be stripped weekdays beginning in September.

The series, budgeted at $120,000 per ep, combines the work of Elstree Film Studios in the U.K. with Decode producing the animated shorts and music video segments with support from animation partner C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures.

Mixing live-action puppetry and animation, the series is based on children’s drawings and follows five groovy and inquisitive Hoobs as they visit new worlds in search of all things earthly.

Mellie Buse and Sue Taylor are producing the series, with Decode’s Julia Weinstien coproducing.

Richard Bradley is head director.

Hiltz makes waves in NYC

The New York International Independent Film Festival has named Naomi Hiltz of Hiltz Media Group groundbreaking director for her directorial debut Jack’s House.

The film, about a famous Hollywood B movie screenwriter who has one weekend to finish a script for a $54-million feature film, was shot over 18 hours without a script.

The film was also spun off into a soon-to-be-released book entitled 10 Ways to Make a Movie in One Day.

Jack’s House will play at the Los Angeles International Independent Film Festival and then over to Cannes and Milan.

Sonic boom

CTV has given Carla Collins yet another outlet to display her ever-exposed talents – a new comedy/variety series appropriately titled Sonic Temple, which premiered May 5.

The new primetime, nine-part, hour-long series combines live musical performances with celebrity interviews and topical, outrageous comedy about the music industry.

Host Collins (Chez Carla) finds herself in comical on-location adventures, where she conducts spontaneous interviews, all recorded behind the scenes.

Celebrity interviews include Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler, former Talking Head David Byrne, Fat Boy Slim, Janet Jackson and Spice Girl Mel C.

The series will also feature regular appearances by such homegrown comics as Gavin Crawford (The Gavin Crawford Show), Sean Cullen (Wood, Cheese and Children), Jessica Holmes (The Itch) and Teresa Pavlinek (As I Was Saying). The foursome will present pretaped monologues, impersonations, sketches and a weekly entertainment magazine satire, in which they will dish out the latest dirt on the music industry.

The Saturday night series is taped in front of a live studio audience at Toronto’s Masonic Temple (also CTV offices).

The series is produced by Insight Entertainment (Open Mike with Mike Bullard) in association with CTV.

David Kitching is producing. Writers include Collins, Crawford, Cullin, Alex Ganetakos, Holmes, Pavlinek, Paul Schmidt and Tim Steeves.

John Brunton and Barb Bowlby are exec producing.

A partnership with prominent recording industry labels BMG, EMI, DKD/Aquarius, Sony, Universal, Virgin, Warner and Zomba/Jive affords the series access to the biggest and most sought-after musical artists on the scene. *