Montreal: With two new Warner Bros.-backed pictures opening offices in Montreal, the production service season is off to a promising start, at least in terms of studio work. Mathieu Kassovitz’s psychological thriller Gothika is operating out of Mel’s Cite du Cinema/Technoparc while DJ Caruso’s serial murder drama Taking Lives has opened an office at the Cine-Cite Montreal studios.

Taking Lives is from producers Mark Canton, Bernie Goldman and Alan Blomquist and stars Angelina Jolie (Beyond Borders) as an FBI agent tracking a serial killer played by Ethan Hawke. It’s slated to start principal photography in mid-May and goes through to late July. Josette Perrotta (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, The Jackal) is the shoot’s associate producer/PM.

Also shooting at Cine-Cite this month is the NBC Studios pilot E.D.N.Y (G.E.P. Productions), a Muse Entertainment service shoot for producer Mark Burley and director Anthony Drazen, says Martin Fontaine, VP business development, Moliflex-White.

In Montreal, Moliflex manages Cine-Cite Montreal, Studio Moliflex and the Ice Storm Studios and is a partner with Technicolor in Studio LaSalle.

The Canada/U.K. coproduction Heads in the Clouds, a pre-WWII romance set mainly in Paris from director John Duigan and Montreal’s Remstar Productions, is shooting at Ice Storm from March 19 to May 14. Dakota Films is the U.K. coproducer. Talent includes Penelope Cruz, Charlize Theron, Thomas Kretschmann and Quebec actress Karine Vanasse.

Ice Storm’s interior 30,000-square-foot back lot is being rebuilt for Paris locations, says Fontaine.

New film action

Gothika, starring Halle Berry, Penelope Cruz and Robert Downey Jr., films April 7 to June 10. Hollywood veteran Joel Silver is one of the producers. Don Carmody is executive producer.

Upcoming film action at Mel’s Cite du Cinema/Technoparc includes the U.S. indie shoot The Animal, starring Marc Vade, and La Marque jaune, a European coproduction from Montreal’s Transfilm and producer Claude Leger, says Michel Trudel, chair of Locations Michel Trudel and partner with Mel Hoppenheim in Cite du Cinema. Negotiations are also underway for the new Martin Scorsese movie The Aviator, adds Trudel. Leonardo DiCaprio is slated to star as a young, obsessed Howard Hughes.

Quebec movies

Quebec feature film projects booked to shoot at Cite du Cinema include Wajdi Mouawad’s first movie Littoral (Productions EGM); Marek Kanievska’s A Different Loyalty (Forum Films), starring Sharon Stone; and the Erik Canuel bank-heist thriller Le Tunnel, a coproduction between Montreal’s Bloom Films and Christal Films Production, starring Michel Cote and Jean Lapointe. The latter is slated to begin filming May 12.

Trudel says he’s booked all 14 soundstages, with a little something left over for local spot production.

‘If it continues to boom in Montreal we will have to build more soundstages. And we have the space,’ adds Trudel.

Two service shoots kept local film crews somewhat busy during the late fall and winter, including the untitled Josh Hartnett project, formerly Wicker Park (Lakeshore Entertainment, producers Gary Lucchesi, Tom Rosenberg, Andre Lamal), a remake of the French movie L’Appartement. The film also stars Diane Kruger. Paul McGuigan is the director and the distrib is MGM.

The main piece of business this fall-winter however is the US$100-million Fox weather-disaster flick Tomorrow (aka The Day After Tomorrow), which provided timely employment for some 700 people, says Nick Barker, location manager with the Montreal Film and TV Commission. Tomorrow stars Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhall, Ian Holm and Sela Ward. Producers include Mark Gordon, Kelly Van Horn and Roland Emmerich, who is also directing.

Tomorrow took over Phase 3 at Cite du Cinema back in September, and is slated to wrap March 28. The decisive selling point for Montreal was the availability of Phase 3’s 50,000-square-feet of studio space with 50-foot-high ceilings, says Trudel. In all, the picture has occupied six soundstages.

In terms of exteriors, the filmmakers had access to Montreal City Hall and the old Van Horne railway station, which stood in for a snowbound city in southern India.

When Tomorrow needed additional studio space, Fontaine says the producers were able to take over a 15,000-square-foot soundstage at the Cine-Cite Montreal, the site of a former military air base.

Last fall, Richard Donner shot the Paramount Pictures fantasy Timeline at Cine-Cite.

In other studio news, promoters with WonderWorks Montreal Studios recently said they plan to start construction on a 210,000-square-foot facility this May. The special F/X studio complex is being developed in association with WonderWorks Entertainment Group in LA, with several projects from associated production division Avondale Production tentatively slated to shoot there in late ’03.

-www.micheltrudel.tv

-www.cinecitemontreal.com