Montreal: Principal photography on Paul Thinel’s (Rumue-menage, Second souffle) feature film debut Les Immortels wrapped Oct. 7 after close to five weeks of shooting, mainly on location in the industrial town of Sorel, QC.

It’s a ‘feel-good story’ with dramatic and comedy elements about a youthful pop band, seemingly headed for success and the big city, and a second musical outfit mostly made up of older local factory workers, says ACPAV’s Marc Daigle, who is producing with Rene Gueissaz.

Leads include Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge (Le Matou, Rumeurs) as the leader of the pop band Les Immortels, Senator Jean Lapointe, Isabelle Lemme, Pascal Parent, Andre Ouellete, drum king Guy Nadon and Paolo Noel.

ACPAV has picked up about $200,000 of the financing on the $2.4-million production and Daigle says the producers are open to partnerships related to the music, intergenerational issues and other sponsorship opportunities.

Funders include distrib Cinema Libre, committed to a significant release (more than 30 screens) next fall, Tele-Quebec, Super Ecran, SODEC and ‘the automatic’ component of the Canada Feature Film Fund. The value of the Quebec tax credit as a percentage of the budget is 22.5%.

Craft credits on Les Immortels go to DOP Bruno Philip, who shot on Super 16mm film, art director Colombe Raby and PM Robert Lacerte. Music and lyrics are by Marc Bisaillon and Eric Rathe under the supervision of orchestra arranger Guy St-Onge. Heidi Haines is editing at PRIM.

ACPAV’s 2002 slate includes Bernard Emond’s (La Femme qui boit) second feature 20h17 rue Darling, starring Luc Picard. It’s produced by Bernadette Payeur and will be released by Christal Films Distribution. The house also completed production on three docs this year, Robert Monderie’s La loi de l’eau; Jean-Claude Coulbois’ La Naissance d’une messe and Edgar Soldevila’s Dans l’esprit de Norman Bethune.

Remstar steps up

Remstar Productions and Dakota Films of London start eight weeks of filming Jan. 7 on the Montreal leg of the pre-WWII romantic period drama Head in the Clouds, following an initial week of shooting in December in Paris, where the story is primarily set.

Head in the Clouds is from screenwriter/director John Duigan (Sirens, Lawn Dogs) and stars Penelope Cruz (Vanilla Sky, Masked & Anonymous), Natalie Portman (Star Wars) and Jay Rodan (Callas Forever).

The film is an official Canada/U.K. coproduction, with 70% of the $25.5 million in financing from Remstar. The partners are sharing international rights, says Remstar copresident Maxime Remillard, who is producing with Andre Rouleau and Dakota’s Bertil Olhsson (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Amadeus) and Jonathan Olsberg (Me Without You, Othello).

The film starts preproduction Oct. 28 at the Cine Cite Montreal studios. Local casting is by Elite Productions.

Remstar’s production slate includes the $24-million feature film No Good Deed, a Seven Arts Picture production from director Bob Rafelson, starring Samuel L. Jackson. The producers are in advanced talks with a major U.S. studio.

Another Euro coproduction, with French house JLA Production and the U.K.’s Future Film Group, was one of this year’s hot drama titles at MIPCOM, the four-hour miniseries Dangerous Liaisons, budgeted at $34 million. A contemporary adaptation of Pierre Choderlos’ classic tale of duplicitous lovers from director Josee Dyan (Les Miserables), Liaisons stars Catherine Deneuve, Rupert Everett, Leelee Sobieski (Joan of Arc) and Nastassja Kinski.

In Canada, Remstar has output agreements with Toronto’s Chesler/Perlmutter and Montreal’s Transfilm.

Apartment 11’s Mystery Hunters

Producer/writer Jonathan Finklestein has made a name for himself in the international youth program market by producing and creating series such as Popular Mechanics for Kids, Street Cents, Fun Food Frenzy and YAA! To The M@X.

Finklestein’s programs have won many national and international awards, and he has received more than a dozen Gemini Award nominations, winning five.

Finklestein’s latest, and first through his own house Apartment 11 Productions, is Mystery Hunters, a 26 half-hour doc-style tween adventure series licensed by Discovery Kids International in the U.K., continental Asia, Australia and Latin America, and in Canada by digital channel Discovery Kids Canada and YTV, both Corus Entertainment brands. Apartment 11 holds selling rights in parts of Western Europe, Canada and China.

In Mystery Hunters, Christina Broccolini, 17, and Araya Mengesha, 14, travel around the world to investigate mysteries and the supernatural. They rely on science and reason and do things like descend into the sewers of Boston to investigate the infamous sewer gators, help string apples from trees to ferret out Florida’s skunk ape, and ride with a park ranger into a haunted forest in pursuit of the almost mythical eastern cougar.

The leads travel on their own, but shoot wraparounds together in Montreal. A third character, Doubting Dave, is played by comedian David Acer.

Matthew Cope is exec story editor. Ramelle Mair is a writer. Directors include Sid Goldberg, Zsolt Luka, Serge Marcil and Eli Gorn.

The series has ‘a touch of animation’ and was taped between February and November on location in Canada, the U.S., South America, Egypt and Europe, mostly in the U.K. The budget is just over $100,000 per episode, says Finklestein, the show’s creator and exec producer.

Apartment 11’s development slate includes My Web World, a CBC ‘Internet adventure’ produced in association with network producer Julian Sher; The 3rd Eye, a half-hour supernatural teen drama for TVA International and YTV; and Little Haunted Mansion, a comedy-action series about a family that lives in a home haunted by their ancestors, for Jean-Pierre Morin’s Vivavision.

Kaufman directs Nightwaves

JB Media and director James Kaufman started principal photography Oct. 16 on the premium TV thriller Nightwaves, starring Sherilyn Fenn (Twin Peaks, Law & Order) and Canadians David Nerman and Bruce Dinsmore. The film is the fifth in a slate of five MOWs produced by the house in the past year. Nightwaves is being produced on a budget of $3 million in association with Astral Television Networks and Hearst Entertainment.

The MOW tells the story of a woman recuperating from a car accident that took her husband’s life. While listening to broadcasts on his old police scanner is a form of remedial distraction, it leads to eavesdropping on neighborhood phones and a deadly conspiracy.

Nightwaves will premiere on The Movie Network, Super Ecran and Movie Central. Hearst holds international rights while JB Media is the distributor in Canada, the U.S. and all French-speaking European and African territories.

Jean Bureau (Guilt By Association, The Interrogation of Michael Crowe), who is producing with Josee Mauffette, says the pay-TV package will go into profit after the initial broadcast cycle. Bureau and Nora Reynolds are exec producers.

Georges Archambault is the DOP and Serge Denis is the PM. Nightwaves wraps Nov. 8.

PRH’s Fire Quest

One of the most-screened new animation series at this year’s MIPCOM Junior was Fire Quest/Les Enfants du feu, a France/Canada coproduction between producer Roch Lener of Paris’ Millimages and Roger Heroux of Montreal’s PRH Creation Image.

The 26 half-hour series follows the adventures of prehistoric kids in their search for fire, a storyline reminiscent of Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Quest for Fire (1981), filmed in Canada and produced by Roger’s brother, Denis Heroux. Fire Quest is an original idea from Roger Heroux and writer Leopold St-Pierre. The screenwriting team includes Patrick Galliano (head) and Canadian Patrice Resther.

PRH, which has 40% of the $10-million coproduction, is handling compositing, editing and voice-over by UDA artists. Broadcasters are France 3 and Radio-Canada, which will air the series in Janunary 2003.

Talks are underway with CBC and APTN in the English market, says development director Marie-Pierre Rodier.

PRH has three animation series in development with French partners as well as a $7-million feature project called Kids Halloween, a Quebec adaptation of a French comic book series.

Bordeaux festival prize for Ferrari

Director/producer Pepita Ferrari recently returned from the Festival international du cinema au feminin in Bordeaux, France, where the artist portrait Joseph Giunta: Un Triomphe Silencieux/Joseph Giunta: A Silent Triumph took the Prix d’honneur in the documentary category. The film picked up two Golden Sheafs at this year’s 55th Yorkton Short Film and Video Festival, for best direction in a documentary and for best arts and entertainment program.

If all goes well with EIP and LFP funding this fall, Ferrari says she’ll start production next spring on the one-hour historical doc The Unsexing of Emma Edmonds.

The remarkable Sarah Emma Edmonds, originally from New Brunswick, posed as a traveling bible salesman before enlisting, as a man, in 1861 with a Michigan regiment and taking an active role in the bloody U.S. Civil War.

The project has support from History Television, CFCF-TV and dedicated auteur backer the Canadian Independent Film & Video Fund, which is providing a $50,000 production grant.

Ferrari’s historical documentary portraits of women artists include By Woman’s Hand and The Petticoat Expeditions.

Wicker Park in prep

Lakeshore Entertainment, in association with distrib MGM and producers Gary Lucchesi and Tom Rosenberg, has returned to Montreal to shoot Wicker Park, a contemporay romantic thriller a la Hitchcock (and remake of the French movie L’Appartement) from director Paul MacGuigan (Gangster No. 1, The Acid House). Lakeshore, partnering with Miramax Films and Stone Village Productions, was in Quebec earlier this year to shoot Robert Benton’s The Human Stain, the Philip Roth adaptation starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman.

Wicker Park stars heartthrob Josh Hartnett (The Virgin Suicides, Pearl Harbor) in the role of a young, obsessed New York investment banker. Craft credits go to DOP Peter Sova, designer Richard Bridgland, art director Pierre Perrault and PM Manon Bougie.

Wicker Park films from Dec. 9 to February 2003.