Building on the success of Trudeau, Chester, NS-based Big Motion Pictures is in development on a prequel to last year’s acclaimed miniseries. Trudeau: The Early Years will focus on the celebrated prime minister’s life before Ottawa, say BMP producers Wayne Grigsby and David MacLeod.

Unlike Trudeau, the prequel will be produced in both French and English, four one-hour episodes in each language, to air on CBC and Radio-Canada, respectively.

Grigsby says versioning for a French and English audience will increase production time and budget by about 40%, for a projected budget of $12 million.

Casting will also be difficult, as the project demands actors who are comfortable performing in both languages. Bilingual Colm Feore, who played Trudeau in the first miniseries, will return to play the younger Trudeau in the prequel. Guy Fournier (executive story editor on Trudeau) will cowrite the script with Grigsby, who is looking at bringing back Trudeau director Jerry Ciccoritti to helm the prequel.

Slated to go into production in fall 2003 for delivery in fall 2004, the prequel will be shot in Quebec and Nova Scotia, and Grigsby says it will probably be a regional coproduction between the two provinces.

Driven by interest from SRC, BMP has secured additional development funding from the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, Cogeco and Telefilm Canada.

The prodco has just wrapped production on A Guy and A Girl, its comedy series for W Network, which went to camera at the end of July.

The 13-part series, budgeted at $135,000 for each half-hour, has been expanded to 14 at the request of the broadcaster, which started airing the show in a Sunday 7:30 p.m. slot on Sept. 8.

Grigsby and MacLeod acquired the English-language rights for Guy A. Lepage’s popular Quebec series Un gars, une fille, currently in its fifth season on SRC. The format has been sold to a dozen countries.

The series focuses closely on the relationship between two main characters, played by Toronto actors Jeff Clarke and Katherine Ashby, a thirtysomething couple trying to navigate a future they are not entirely sure they’ll share.

Brian Heighton, who directs six episodes, says the pared-down production approach, using predominantly single-camera positions for each scene and rarely showing characters other than Clarke’s and Ashby’s in frame, was challenging and depended heavily on good dialogue and energy between the protagonists. Stephen Reynolds (The Divine Ryans) helmed the first episode.

BMP is also in development on Wolves Among Sheep, a $4-million MOW for CTV based on the novel of the same name by James Kostelniuk. Atom Egoyan, through his Toronto prodco Ego Film Arts, will coproduce with Grigsby and MacLeod.

With development funding through CTV, the script will be penned by David Fraser and tells the true story of Kostelniuk’s experience as an ex-Jehovah’s Witness who struggles with forgiveness when his ex-wife and children are murdered at the hands of the man who took his place in the family.

Grigsby and MacLeod are developing another MOW for CTV, Sleep Murder ($4 million), with APTN taking second window. Coproduced with Christina Jennings and Virginia Rankin of Toronto’s Shaftesbury Films, the story follows a Toronto-based legal aid worker who travels to Iqaluit, NV to investigate a murder. Penned by David Gustav Fraser and directed by Andrew Currie (Mile Zero), the production receives funding from Telefilm, Cogeco, the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, CTV and APTN and will be distributed by Buena Vista International.

And that’s not all on BMP’s development slate. They are also working on Enchanter, a family mystery MOW for CBC, with additional development funding from Telefilm and the NSFDC. Halifax-based Michael Amo (Blessed Stranger) is penning the script.

And finally, BMP is developing Portland Street, a law office drama series that Grigsby describes as ”60s idealism meets ’90s cynicism.’

Rock Island takes on Joyce

Rosemary House of St. John’s, NF Rock Island Productions is developing James Joyce and Music, a documentary with dramatic elements that explores the story of the author’s musical life and how song filters into his writing. With development funding from CHUM (which will take a second window), as well as funds from Telefilm, the NSFDC and the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, the doc will start shooting in Dublin, Ireland in June 2003 for delivery on Bloomsday (June 16), 2004.

Meanwhile, House and Mary Sexton, partners in St. John’s-based Dark Flowers Productions, are developing the $6-million MOW Atlantic Blue. Sexton produces and House coproduces and writes. It is scheduled for an April 2003 shoot in Newfoundland and tells the story of the Ocean Ranger that went down 20 years ago, killing many of its predominantly Maritime crew.

Sexton is also producing Hospital City, a documentary series that examines a big-city hospital as an organism within the community. House will write, direct and provide unique access to the inner sanctum of Health Sciences in St. John’s.

The documentary will focus on a cardiac patient as well as a hospital maintenance staff member. They are hoping to begin shooting the $350,000 doc in late November, to wrap at the end of December.

Dark Flowers is also developing Young Triffie, a black comedy feature based on a play by St Johns’-based Ray Guy, with funding from CBC, Telefilm and the Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation. Sexton will produce with Mary Walsh (This Hour Has 22 Minutes) and they will collaborate on writing with Halifax writers Ray Guy and Christian Murray.

Bikes, dykes and strippers

Mary Sexton is also coproducing Tennyson’s Wake with New Brunswick producer/director Monique LeBlanc. The feature will be a Newfoundland/New Brunswick coproduction between Sexton’s Rink Rat Productions of St. John’s and CinImages of Moncton, and will be distributed theatrically by Montreal’s Cinema Libre.

The $1.9-million production is penned by Tracey Izatt and will be shot in Moncton, with development funds from Telefilm, the NLFDC, Film New Brunswick and Showcase. With plans to go to camera in summer 2003, the feature tells the story of a young woman who returns to New Brunswick for her father’s funeral and ends up taking over his bar, adding a few small touches of her own to the traditional local pub, like bikes, dykes and strippers.