Animators are drawing, or pointing and clicking, as fast as they can at Decode Entertainment these days as the Toronto-based animation house launches – not one, not two, not three, but four new shows. The company delivered episode one of Girlstuff/Boystuff to YTV in mid-August, just in time for its Sept. 6 airdate, and will roll out the remaining 25 half-hours through the fall. The series, described as ‘an animated tween Friends’ by Decode VP Beth Stevenson, will include more than 300 rock tunes licensed from various indie labels in the U.K., thanks to music supervisors Ron Proulx and Chris Robinson, both of whom worked on the MTV cartoon series Undergrads.

Richard Burdette and Hana Kukal direct the series, working under Stevenson (Angela Anaconda) and her fellow producers Elana Adair and Steven DeNure. The series – coproduced with Agogo Entertainment in Hong Kong and the U.K.’s Animus Entertainment – is working on a $200,000 budget, backed in part by the Corus Teen Drama Fund.

Decode is also working on its first preschooler series and has handed over the first half-hour of Save-Ums! to CBC. The 3D animated, 26-ep show is made in association with the computer whizzes at CORE Digital Pictures and recounts the adventures of six super-powered children. It’s expected to premier on CBC in January and on Discovery Kids in the U.S. a month later.

Directors Doug Masters and Aaron Linton of CORE have until April to wrap season one, billed at roughly $155,000 an episode. The series is watched over by producer Dan Clark and again by DeNure and Stevenson.

On King, Decode is coproducing with Ottawa’s Fun Bag Animation, bringing in producer Gord Coulthart (For Better or Worse) and director Jerry Popowich (Undergrads) to turn out the 26 half-hours about a 12-year-old boy who finds his way onto the throne of a magical kingdom. The cartoon series – in production since the summer and expected to wrap in May – will air in Canada on Family Channel sometime after the first ep is delivered in December. The search is on for a U.S. broadcaster.

King got funding from the LFP, Shaw Cable’s Conway Fund and licence fees from Family. Development money for the $375,000 series came from The Harold Greenberg Fund.

Decode’s current production slate is rounded out with the new series Blobheads, which will shoot over four months starting Sept. 16. The 26-ep half-hour series combines live action and CGI – and casting is now underway to fill the role of a 12-year-old boy who has to contend with two live-in aliens. It’s a coproduction with U.K. prodco Wark Clements.

Funding for the $425,000 series came from Telefilm Canada, the LFP, and again, from the Conway Fund.

Blobheads will air on CBC in February and has also been picked up by Nickelodeon U.K., Nickelodeon International, ZDF in Germany and Canal J in France.

Hey, Big Spender

Toronto’s Leader Media Productions will soon wrap production on Big Spender, a family drama about the bond between a prison convict and a sickly racehorse being shot under the banner of Big Horse Films.

Director Paul Schneider (Lethal Vows) has been making the rounds of southern Ontario since early August – shooting at Woodbine racetrack, in nearby Bolton and at an equestrian farm out near Aurora – with stars Casper Van Dien (Starship Troopers) and the ubiquitous Graham Greene (Duct Tape Forever, Snow Dogs). Carlo Liconti and Kim Yu of Leader are producing.

The small-budget feature is due at Animal Planet in the U.S. by early November and expected to air sometime in 2003. Equinox Films will distribute in Canada.

Charlotte Bernard stays home

Toronto prodco Charlotte Bernard Entertainment has tapped civil rights lawyer Alan Young to host its one-hour doc Justice Defiled, and hopes the project about the ‘legal regulation of pleasure’ will be picked up as a series. Shooting runs through September around Toronto, on an undisclosed budget, with Bob Banack, Joel Awerbuck and Anna Bensimon in the producer chairs. No word yet on a distributor.

The company is then expected to roll cameras on Ten Years in October. The feature film, due to shoot over six weeks in late fall to the tune of $4 million, brings Toronto-born director Marni Banack (Sheer Bliss, John) back to town, along with Clockstoppers and Bring It On star Jesse Bradford.

It’s the story of a bereaved young man trying to get on with his life. Ten Years drew development funding and licence fees from Corus Entertainment and is in the market for a distributor and a DOP.

Travesty hits the road

They shot a whopping 300 hours of footage, so Travesty Productions is packaging its deadend.com as both a feature film and an 18-ep half-hour series. Shot in 2000 for a mere $25,000 – private investments plus roughly $110,000 from Telefilm’s low-budget feature film program – the drama follows three teens on the road from Quebec to British Columbia. The movie debuts at the Toronto International Film Festival and is on the lookout for a distributor. The TV version, still in need of a broadcaster, will be out of the editing suite by late fall, say producers Phillip Daniels and S. Wyeth Clarkson.

(For more on deadend.com, see this issue’s Report on TIFF, p. T-32.)

Seeking Salvation, two one-hours about early black churches in Canada, is also currently in the works for Vision TV. The $185,000 project got $80,000 from the faith-based broadcaster, plus funds from the LFP and EIP and another $25,000 from The Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund.

Travesty is also wrapping its doc The Five-Cent War for History Television. The $100,000 one-hour – bankrolled half by the specialty channel and half by the LFP, EIP and federal tax credits – recounts a 1947 revolt by Canadian children against high chocolate bar prices. It’s due in December and expected to air in 2003.