While the rest of us have been freezing our butts off, Pete Luckett, host of Ocean Entertainment’s Food Hunter, has been gallivanting down south, shooting season two of the cooking/travel series. Each episode focuses on a different country and its local delights: avocados in Mexico, snow peas in Guatemala and grapes in Chile, to be followed by a trip to Tahiti for vanilla and Hawaii for pineapples.

The Halifax-based production company will deliver six half-hours to broadcasters and primary financiers, Food Network Canada and Food Network (U.S.), to air in the spring. The $600,000 series is produced by Ocean’s Johanna Eliot and directed by Edward Mowbray.

Ocean is also in post on Red Hot n’ Ready for Global, a comedic barbecue show for men hosted by John Pritchard for diginet mentv. It is also posting season two of Chef at Large, coproduced with Gretha Rose of Charlottetown, PEI-based Cellar Door Productions, to air this winter on Food Network Canada, with season three in prep.

Also in coproduciton with Cellar Door, Ocean is in preproduction on Crossing The Golden Bridge: The Story of Canada’s Home Children, a $200,000 doc for Global that will film in P.E.I. and Nova Scotia this spring for delivery in the summer.

Docs at Dreamsmith

Monction, NB-based Dreamsmith Entertainment is in developent on Bound for Carnegie, a one-hour performance doc for CBC’s Opening Night that will follow the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra as it performs to raise money for a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City. The $400,000 doc is produced by Rick LeGuerrier of West Street Pictures in Moncton, N.B. and Dreamsmith’s Timothy Hogan, with executive producer W. James Hogan, also of Dreamsmith. Producers will be looking to the CTF in March to top up funding received from CBC and New Brunswick Film.

LeGuerrier is also developing Neutral Ground, a one-hour doc for CBC Newsworld’s Rough Cuts. It examines the effect of continuing violence in Belfast on the city’s children by following a dozen Protestant and Catholic youth as they leave the troubles of Northern Ireland behind them to spend a month in Saint John, NB. LeGuerrier writes, directs and produces the $260,000 doc.

Salter gets set for Shattered City

Halifax-based Salter Street Films, in coproduction with Toronto’s Tapestry Pictures, is getting set to shoot Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion March 15 to May 9.

The 2 x 120 miniseries from producers Michael Donovan, Charles Bishop, Heather Golden Haldane and Mary Young Leckie tells the story of Dec. 6, 1917 when the Mont Blanc, a French munitions ship, exploded in Bedford Basin, destroying the north end of Halifax. It was the biggest manmade explosion before the nuclear age, killing more than 2,000 people. Hours after the explosion, the city was buried beneath two feet of snow as the worst storm in 10 years descended on the area.

Written by Keith Ross Leckie and directed by Bruce Pittman, Shattered City will shoot at various locations in and around Halifax. DOP is Rene Ohashi and Elizabeth Guildford is the production manager.

French-language film hooks imX up with Europeans

Halifax prodco imX Communications is forging new partnerships in Europe with its first French-language feature, Folle Embellie (Out of this World), an official Canada/France/Belgium coproduction with France’s Films de la Croisade and Belgium’s Tarantula.

Canadian producers include imX president Chris Zimmer and Ann Bernier. Films de la Croisade and Tarantula were looking to establish a relationship with an English coproducing partner in Canada, says Bernier.

The Canadian portion of the feature, sound editing and mixing, is underway after a seven-week summer shoot in France and Belgium. The film received funding from Telefilm Canada (Feature Film Fund and Mini-Treaty) and will be distributed domestically by Montreal-based Funfilm Distribution, with international rights going to Paris-based ARP Selection.

The $4.5-million production is written by Antoine Montperrin and Dominique Cabrera, who also directs. Starring French actors Miou Miou and Jean-Pierre Leaud and Canadians Gabriel Arcand and Pascale Montpetit, the feature is set during WWII when the inmates of an insane asylum are left to fend for themselves after the medical staff flees.

ImX goes into production on 26 11-minute episodes of Flash animation series Crafty Cow at the end of the month, coproduced with New Zealand’s Slightly Off Beat Productions. Penned by Halifax-based Cheryl Wagner, Geoff LeBoutillier, John Davie and Lynn Turner, the under-$1-million series will air on CBC in September and receives funding from Shaw, the LFP and CBC.

ImX is also in development on Those Guys, an approximately $7-million gangster/cop comedy feature, to start shooting in late summer. Produced by Zimmer, the feature will star Colin Mochrie (This Hour has 22 Minutes) and is penned by Patrick McKenna and Enio Mascherin.