Ottawa’s Twist Pictures and Montreal-based Seville Pictures have completed principal photography on Posers, a new feature film from writer/director Katie Tallo (Juiced). The film shot Nov. 14 to Dec. 4 in Ottawa.

According to Twist producer Chantal Ling, who worked with Tallo on the series The Last Band on the Planet, the director brought her the script in its first draft and after a bit of development the pair presented it to Seville. It is the first coproduction between the two companies.

Posers is about a group of wild, club-hopping party girls who beat another girl to death in a washroom. The girls get involved in a mystery when one of them is murdered following the crime.

Jessica Pare (Stardom), Stephanie von Pfetten (40 Days and 40 Nights), Sarain Boylan (Fairy Feller), Emily Hampshire (Scorn) and Adam Beach (next to be seen in John Woo’s Windtalkers) star.

Ling says she is delighted with the young cast the production team brought together for the film.

‘It’s not like you can just throw a bunch of girls together,’ she says. ‘They have to look good together; they have to look like a gang. When you hang out with people you start to take on their personalities and beliefs, but we wanted them to look different too. It was a long process, but the people we have are bang-on.’

Budgeted at roughly $1 million, Posers is funded by its production companies, Telefilm and tax credits.

Ling and Seville’s John Hamilton are producing. Seville’s David Reckziegel is exec producer.

Seville will distribute in Canada. Ling says an international distributor has yet to be sought.

Lethal puppets

Puppets Who Kill, a new 13-episode, half-hour series for The Comedy Network, wrapped shooting Dec. 16 in Toronto. It has been a long time coming for the series’ cocreators, Steve Westren and John Pattison (Fraggle Rock), who is also the show’s writer/coproducer. Based on the popular stage play by Pattison, the live-action/puppet series was first pitched at the Banff Television Festival Market Simulation in 1998 where it garnered a lot of interest from broadcasters in Canada and abroad, including Comedy. Coproducer/director Shawn Alex Thompson (Dinner at Fred’s) is hoping to find the same level of interest when Puppets Who Kill debuts this spring on Comedy.

The series is a coproduction between PWK Productions and Radical Sheep Productions, both of Toronto.

In the show, four puppets gone bad end up in a halfway house for rehabilitation. The puppets exist in our world and interact with human counterparts, including Dan Redican (The Frantics), who stars as the social worker running the halfway house. Debauchery ensues, and Thompson admits these puppets are pushing the envelope. Decidedly a show for an adult audience.

Seasoned puppeteers Jim Rankin (The Continuing Adventures of Dudley the Dragon) and Gord Robertson (Short Circuit) are joined by novices Bob Martin (Twitch City) and Bruce Hunter (Second City), who were brought on board for their comedy backgrounds and sensibilities.

Radical Sheep’s John Leitch and Robert Mills are the executive producers.

The series has a budget of $150,000 per episode, with funding from Telefilm, the Licence Fee Program, provincial tax credits and Comedy.

The first season of Puppets Who Kill will be delivered to Comedy in February for airing this spring.

Thompson says he and Pattison are now seeking out a distributor.

Patti to Amaze Comedy, WTN

Toronto’s Amaze Film and Television has just wrapped production on a six-part, half-hour comedy series called Patti, based on the Golden Sheaf-winning short film Patti Burns, written and directed by Mike Souther.

In the series, Patti, played by Miranda Black (subject of the upcoming documentary series The It Factor on Bravo!), is a misfit in her twenties who is trying to fit in and make it through the day. Black costars in the series with Sean Cullen (Mad TV), Rob Tinkler (Loser) and Gina Clayton (I Was a Sixth Grade Alien).

Souther and Amaze partner Teza Lawrence share writer/producer credits on Patti, which was shot on HD 24P. Souther is also directing some episodes.

The cast and crew spent the first week of the shoot on location in Hamilton, ON, before moving to Epitome Studios in Toronto, where Lawrence says they took full advantage of Epitome’s ‘great backlot,’ which has provided scenery for Liberty Street, Riverdale and other productions.

Souther says Patti is scheduled to begin airing on The Comedy Network in spring 2002. WTN has a second window.

‘We’ve been pretty aggressive over the last six months trying to set up an international partner for the next seven episodes,’ says Souther. ‘We’ve been shopping it around a lot. We are trying to secure a U.K. or U.S. production partner, like a network, and we have a number of interested parties.’

With a budget of just over $1 million for the six eps, the series’ funding sources include the Licence Fee Program and tax credits. Cogeco and Telefilm provided development assistance.

Real Men speak out

The testosterone is pumping at Toronto’s Breakthrough Entertainment as the prodco continues production on its 65-episode, half-hour magazine Real Men. The series premiered Dec. 10 on diginet Men TV and is being heralded as the broadcaster’s flagship program.

Hosted by the show’s creative producer Tim Steeves (a former writer on Salter Street’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes), Real Men looks at issues important to men, with a panel of celebrities and experts on hand to discuss the topic of the day. ‘Everything from prostate cancer to stripping,’ says Breakthrough producer Peter Williamson. He says Real Men will also cover foreplay, coping with job loss, vasectomy, adolescence and puberty, one-night stands, why men love video games, and more.

Although some of the issues tackled by the program promise to be fairly heavy, Williamson assures they will be dealt with in an entertaining way. The panels feature entertainers as well as experts. And a woman is always on board ‘to keep the guys honest and provide a woman’s point of view,’ says Williamson.

With a series budget of approximately $750,000, Real Men is being financed by Men TV parent Global Television, Breakthrough and federal tax credits. The show is being shot live-to-tape at Global’s Toronto studios to give it a ‘spontaneous’ feel, says Williamson.