CALGARY-based Nomadic Pictures has one project freshly wrapped and one gearing up to go before the cameras.

The just-wrapped shoot (May 4) has the distinction of being the first provincial coproduction with the Yukon. Budgeted at $2 million, Snowbound, produced by Chad Oakes and Mike Frislev, shot for 12 days in the Yukon and for six in Calgary. About two women who leave town after one is attacked and wind up in a cabin in the wilderness, Snowbound stars Erika Eleniak (Under Siege, Beverly Hillbillies, Baywatch), Monica Schnarre (Andromeda, Beastmaster) and recording artist Jann Arden.

Nomadic is in final negotiations with Lions Gate for domestic distrib rights, and has a five-city theatrical release planned for the end of September that encompasses Ottawa, Calgary, Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto. International distrib rights, excluding the U.S., which still belong to Nomadic, were sold to World International Network in L.A.

Funding came from TMN-The Movie Network and SuperChannel, which share first window, and Calgary’s A-Channel, which has second-window rights. Other money came from CAVCO, provincial grants and rebates.

May 23 is the scheduled start date for Nomadic’s other project, Cover Story, starring Jason Priestley, Elizabeth Berkley and Costas Mandylor (Soapdish, Mobsters, Picket Fences). The MOW follows a fashion editor wrongly accused of murdering a billionaire as she attempts to clear her name and find the real killer. It will shoot in Calgary on a budget of $2.5 million.

International distribution rights have been sold to L.A.-based Overseas Film Group, excluding rights to the U.S., which have been taken by U.S. financier/distributor Aladdin Entertainment, and Canada, which Nomadic has retained. Funding for the project came from the Alberta producer’s grant and CAVCO.

Oakes has also just finished a stint as exec producer on Prophecy Pictures’ The Barber (‘They did 99% of the work,’ he emphasizes), which wrapped May 7. Oakes attributes this recent flurry of activity in part to strike-chill. ‘Because the strike was looming, it helped close off some of our presales. Without a doubt, people were looking at where they were going to get programming from and that helped in getting the decision [to buy] made a little sooner.’

Doc captures

falcon resurgence

NATURE doc Return of the Peregrine Falcon from Edmonton’s Reel Girls Media is currently posting in Edmonton and scheduled for a fall screening on the CBC’s The Nature of Things.

The peregrine falcon is, producer Ava Karvonen says, ‘the most widely dispersed species in the world, and the fastest species in the world.’ Until recently it was also on the brink of worldwide extinction. The pesticide DDT had a devastating effect on the bird, weakening eggshells to the stage that ‘eggs’ were laid without any shell at all.

In part because of a controversial breeding program that included taking unhatched eggs from nests for in-laboratory incubation and then replacing the newly hatched young in suitable nests, the species has come back from the brink. Rescue efforts began in the 1970s and have wound down only recently.

‘It’s been quite a journey. They were on the brink of extinction, but they’ve been downgraded to endangered. When the number of breeding pairs in Alberta, currently at about 50, goes up to 80, Alberta Fish and Wildlife will no longer classify the breed as threatened,’ says Karvonen.

Shooting on the project, which commenced in June 2000, included time at the longest continual peregrine study in the world in Rankin Inlet in the Northwest Territories. Funding for the $165,000 doc came from the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, CFCN, Telefilm Canada, the CBC, Learning and Skills Television and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Delivery is scheduled for early July.

Partners keeps

wheels in motion

REGINA’S Partners in Motion is currently moving through various stages of production on three projects.

Disasters of the Century, which began as a 5 x 60 series canvassing some of Canada’s worst disasters (the Halifax Explosion, the Frank Slide) is in production on a further eight eps. A crew has been travelling the world since the start of May shooting footage for internationally themed eps to widen the series’ overall appeal. The total budget for the 13 episodes is $1.7 million. The shoot will wrap in late summer.

Ordinary People, a 13 x 30 series that looks to the man-in-the-street with an interesting story to tell, is in development, with a production date scheduled for fall. Budget stands at $1.5 million.

Very Odd Jobs, another 13 x 30 series, looks at unusual employment and is currently in preproduction, with shooting scheduled to start in Europe in late spring. Budget is $900,000.

Size matters for circus act

WINNIPEG-based French-language prodco Les Productions Rivard is scheduled to wrap in late June on L’Etrange Histoire du Geant Beaupre (Edouard Beaupre: The Giant).

The one-hour doc, directed by Georges Payrastre and produced by Charles Lavack, tells the story of a real-life giant from Saskatchewan, Edouard Beaupre. Beaupre died in 1904 at the age of 23 while performing with Barnum and Bailey Circus. He had been exploiting his great size (seven feet and 400 pounds as a teenager) for years to help his poverty-stricken family when he died. Even in death he remained in freak shows, before being sent to the University of Montreal for study. His body finally returned to his hometown of Willow Bunch, SK for burial in 1989. Shoot locations include Paris, Montreal, Winnipeg and Willow Bunch.

Rivard will handle post on the project, scheduled for delivery Aug. 31. Budget on the doc, to be shot in French, is $300,000. Funding came from Telefilm, the CTF, and presales to Radio-Canada, which has first window, and Canal D, for second.

Comic to go to camera

CANADIAN comic book hero Dan Cooper will find new life onscreen if Paul Stiles and Ken Mead of Edmonton’s realtime films have anything to do with it. Cooper, unfamiliar to most Canadians, is the ‘James-Bond-like’ hero of a series of comics from a Swiss author that are immensely popular in Europe, says Stiles. The comic book series, which began in 1954, spawned a fresh title as recently as the mid-1990s.

‘Over 20 million copies were sold over 40 years in 43 European countries,’ Stiles says.

Realtime’s The All-New Adventures of Dan Cooper, currently in development and searching for a broadcaster, will be a three-way partnership with Delaney and Friends in Vancouver and writer Martin Borycki’s Vancouver-based Sky Productions.

Stiles feels the production has a ‘huge’ potential in Europe, where Cooper’s profile remains high.

‘Dan Cooper is more popular than Celine Dion and Bryan Adams combined. This is larger-than-life and a big adventure and we want to keep a very Canadian feel to it. He’s a superhero who is Canadian.’

The half-hour animated series is aimed at a 10-plus audience and ‘has the potential to reach audiences well into their 20s,’ Stiles says, especially considering Cooper’s popularity with adults in Europe, where comic books are not perceived as being solely for children.

The series is budgeted at $500,000 per episode, with 13 eps planned initially. Development money thus far, has been forthcoming from Telefilm, CFRN and Cogeco.

Realtime has several other projects in development, including an MOW ‘about kids who get into marketing cults.’ An apparently widespread approach to securing a sales force that will work for less than minimum wage, marketing ‘cults’ target specific types of teenagers and use all the techniques associated with other cults to indoctrinate them into a certain way of life. Removed from their communities, deprived of sleep and adequate food and, subjected to ‘love bombing’ [a technique whereby low self-esteems are systematically bolstered], the teenagers sell door to door as independent contractors while covering their own expenses, inevitably ending up in debt to the company.

The film, budgeted at $4 million, is currently looking for a broadcaster. Development assistance has come from A-Channel, Telefilm, CFCN, CFRN. The finish date for the draft is scheduled for fall, with 2002 pencilled in for production.

Internet meets

international adventure

REGINA-based Minds Eye Pictures’ Internet-to-television series My Global Adventure has found its host after a lengthy search process. From the Rockies, 24-year-old travel buff Asia Nelson has visited Asia, Europe, the U.S. and the Caribbean. The series follows Nelson as she tours destinations around the world, taking part in a series of adventures and cultural experiences, some decided on in advance and others voted on by the audience, who can follow the show on the Internet. Webcasts in this case precede broadcasts.