Barna-Alper’s interest in both docs and drama is satisfied with a diverse production slate with collaborators from coast to coast.

The Toronto prodco, along with Regina-based Minds Eye Pictures, begins shooting this week in Regina on the MOW Betrayed. (For more information, see Prairie Scene, p. 31). Meanwhile, the MOW Choice, about Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s decades-long challenge of Canada’s abortion laws, will go to camera in November for CTV. Montreal director John L’Ecuyer (Saint Jude) will helm from a script by Carole Hay and Suzette Couture (After the Harvest). Laszlo Barna, Barna-Alper’s prez and CEO, is co-exec producer with Kevin Tierney of Montreal’s Park Ex Pictures. Budget is $3 million to $4 million, with funding from the major agencies. Minds Eye International is the worldwide distributor.

Barna-Alper is also looking to take The Last Just Man, a doc it coproduced recounting retired Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire’s peacekeeping tour in Rwanda at the time of massive ethnic killings, into the MOW format. The drama, in development, is a coproduction with Salter Street Films of Halifax. Barna is similarly looking to produce an MOW about Canadian wrestler Brett ‘Hitman’ Hart, in collaboration with Paul Jay, who directed the doc Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows.

Production is winding down on the new science doc series Human Wildlife, which takes a microscopic look at things that live on the human body, such as lice, fleas and tapeworms. David Langer produces the six one-hours written and hosted by charismatic broadcaster Dr. Rob Buckman. Produced in association with Discovery Channel and Canal D, budget is $300,000 per ep. It airs in the fall.

Other ongoing doc series include season six of Turning Points of History, about events that changed Canada and the world, and season four of Frontiers of Construction, about visionary construction projects. There is also a doc in development with CBC and the National Film Board, which includes the participation of broadcaster Avi Lewis and writer Naomi Klein, called Fire the Experts.

Barna has a hand in two of the few Canadian drama series currently on the air, and they continue to roll. Cop show Blue Murder is two episodes into production on season three. This season sees the cast additions of newcomer Benz Antoine and Tamara Hickey, fresh from the cancelled The Associates. The set has also been redesigned for what Barna describes as ‘a lot more edge.’ Steve Lucas of North Bend Film, the show’s creator, co-exec produces with Barna. The program airs on Global.

Meanwhile, the award-winning West Coast police drama Da Vinci’s Inquest, a coproduction with Haddock Entertainment for CBC, is onto season five, ep three in Vancouver.

FranCOEUR rolls in Alfred

Ottawa’s Productions R. Charbonneau begins shooting shortly on the 12-part drama FranCOEUR (formerly Les Enfants de la terre), the first French-language teleroman set in Ontario, specifically in the rural francophone town of Alfred, one hour out of the nation’s capital.

The naturalistic half-hour series stars Marc Belanger as Luc Francoeur, a young dairy farmer struggling to develop avant-garde agricultural technologies in a small town. The show also stars Eugenie Baillargeon-Lessard, Renaud Lacella-Bourdon and several franco-Ontario performers. The first two episodes feature a somewhat scaled-down cast and crew, while the remaining episodes will shoot in late August for eight weeks.

Guy Boutin is the series’ main writer and Derek Diorio (House of Luk), head of Ottawa’s Distinct Features, is director. Marie-Pierre Gariepy produces the $3.3-million series and Robert Charbonneau exec produces. It debuts on TFO in February 2003. Montreal’s Michelle S. Import/Export is handling worldwide sales.

Meanwhile, production on season three of Sciences Point Com, which has moved from a science theme to a kids’ dramatic format, is currently on hiatus and will resume shooting new episodes for Radio-Canada in September. Gariepy produces.

Preliminary shooting on Tekitoi is underway, with the lion’s share of photography on the new series, described as a ‘reality show with children,’ to take place in schools starting in September. Twenty-six half-hours will air on TFO in the program’s first, and so far only, broadcast window in January. Louise Rochon produces.

Also in production is the one-hour doc Ecole de Reve, about Ottawa’s Ecole de LaSalle performing arts school, with the film tracking the experiences of several students. Rochon produces the program, which will also air on TFO in January.

Hudson and McConaughey bring star power to T.O.

Summer’s here and the time is right for runaway production.

Cameras have rolled for two weeks at Toronto’s Showline Harbourside Studios on the romantic comedy How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, inspired by Michele Alexander’s and Jeannie Long’s humorous dating guide of the same title. The film stars Matthew McConaughey (currently on screens in Reign of Fire) as a philandering adman who, to prove his character, aims to show his boss he can stay in a long-term relationship. The woman he chooses, played by Kate Hudson (Almost Famous), happens to be a magazine columnist writing about things women do that sabotage relationships, and sets out to commit these ‘don’ts.’

The film previously shot three weeks of exteriors in New York City, and will do some TO-for-NYC exteriors as well. Donald Petrie (Miss Congeniality) directs from a script by the team of Kristen Buckley and Brian Regan (102 Dalmations) and Burr Steers (Igby Goes Down). Lynda Obst (The Fisher King), Robert Evans (Chinatown) and Christine Forsyth-Peters (The Out-of-Towners) are the producers, and Richard Vane (Rat Race) is exec producer.

The production, with a reported budget of US$47 million to US$50 million, is scheduled to wrap at the end of August and is slated for a 2003 release through Paramount Pictures.

Calling Card greenlights Ghosts

Ghosts, a half-hour suspense drama written and directed by Robert Deleskie and produced by Kate Kung (the Canadian Film Centre’s Short Hymn Silent War), is one of the projects announced to go into production under the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Al Waxman Calling Card Program. The program, which has an unclear future, is aimed at advancing the careers of emerging Ontario producers and directors by financing commercial-length projects.

Ghosts tells the story of a mother and her young son who encounter ghosts, emotional and literal, upon returning to the mother’s childhood home. Budget for the 35mm production consists of $40,000 in OMDC cash, $20,000 in committed services and another $10,000 to $20,000 in producer and director investment. Stephen J. Turnbull, a line producer on several TV productions, is executive producer. Cast has yet to be confirmed for the one week of principal photography slated for September.

The other greenlit Calling Card drama is Masterpiece Monday, produced by Jonathan Sobol (of Darius Films) and written and directed by Glenn Forbes. It tells three converging stories of six characters each experiencing the most significant Monday of their lives.

The two docs that got the OMDC go-ahead are Reality Quest, produced by Andrea Robertson and directed by Lisa Santonato (a CFC h@bitat alumn) and The Mantelpiece, produced by Samantha Hodder and directed by Geoffrey Siskind, two more h@bitat alumns who collaborated on the interactive doc Tightrope. Reality Quest is about an actress who, despite her classical training, spends her career as an alien, while The Mantelpiece follows a taxidermist on his epic journey to stuff animals.

Subsequent to a Toronto screening, the dramas receive a premiere broadcast on Showcase and the docs on TVOntario’s A View from Here. The producers then obtain the rights to pursue festival and other broadcast possibilities.