Alliance Atlantis Motion Picture Distribution and sister distributor Odeon Films will unspool their most ambitious quarter ever for English-Canadian movies this coming fall.

Three new films are slated for wide releases, starting with a Canadian Thanksgiving release by Odeon of Nicolas Kendall’s The Great Goose Caper (Voice Pictures), a family film targeting young girls and mothers starring Chevy Chase and Joan Plowright.

Odeon is looking at an Oct. 3 release for Bill Phillips’ action-suspense film Foolproof, an AAC proprietary production starring Ryan Reynolds and David Suchet, while AAMPD has tentatively set Dec. 5 for the release of LeVar Burton’s Blizzard (Knightscove/ Holedigger Films/AAC), a US$12-million film starring Brenda Blethyn, Christopher Plummer and Whoopi Goldberg as the voice of the reindeer Blizzard.

‘I think the landscape is very exciting for English-Canadian films. Men With Brooms started a trend that makes it abundantly clear success is achievable, and the future product line looks very exciting to us,’ says Jim Sherry, AAMPD executive VP/general manager.

‘We’re seeing the footage [from] both Great Goose Caper and Foolproof and are extremely excited,’ says Odeon president Bryan Gliserman. ‘The effort applied to Foolproof will be on a par with, if not greater than, the effort on Men With Brooms, over $1 milllion in terms of our P&A, but the sky is the limit if the picture is there.’

A major broadcaster tie-in is in the works for Foolproof, a caper suspense with lots of high-tech gizmos and comedy. ‘The bottom line is that this is a totally commercial picture. It’s not even remotely a festival movie,’ says Odeon marketing VP Mark Slone.

Overall, AAC’s fourth quarter in ’03 is potentially huge, with three ‘heavy-hitters’ in the pipeline. First up, on Oct. 10, is Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (Miramax), starring Uma Thurman and Warren Beatty, followed by the third entry in the Peter Jackson trilogy Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (New Line) on Dec. 17 and Anthony Minghella’s US$80-million historical drama Cold Mountain (Miramax), slated for a Dec. 25 release and starring Jude Law as a wounded confederate soldier on a perilous journey home. The all-star cast includes Renee Zellwegger, Nicole Kidman, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi and Donald Sutherland.

On the Tarantino comeback, Sherry says, ‘The script is brilliant and the trailer is a masterpiece.’

Market share momentum

Together, AAMPD, Odeon and Vivafilm secured a record 20.48% market share in Canada in ’02 on the strength of 80 releases and a total box-office take of $207 million. That momentum has held into early ’03 (Jan. 1 to March 12) with a remarkable 33.5% market share on the strength of films including About Schmidt and Chicago (close to $15 million in over 200 theatres), winner of six Academy Awards including best picture.

(As of the March 7-9 weekend, Lord of the Rings: Two Towers became AAC’s highest-grossing film ever with pretax receipts of $53.5 million.)

AAMPD anticipates 90 theatrical and approximately 200 home video releases in ’03.

On theatrical trends, Sherry says, ‘I think two things are occurring. [The market] is more competitive and the bigger films are, in fact, getting bigger. It takes a much more aggressive marketing campaign, more resources, both human and financial, to compete with the branded blockbusters, which are more prevalent today than ever.’

Other AAMPD and Odeon highlights include Neil Jordan’s The Good Thief, coproduced by AAC and picked up by Fox Searchlight in the U.S. and starring Nick Nolte as an aging gambler; the teen comedy How to Deal (New Line); and Robert Rodriguez’s wide release Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (Miramax).

Upcoming Odeon releases include the Patricia Highsmith adaptation Ripley’s Game (Fine Line) and Richard Kwietniowski’s Owning Mahowny (May 2), which has AAC financing and stateside backing from Sony Classics. Gliserman is also keen on the release of Neil Labute’s biting comedy adaptation of his own play The Shape of Things (Focus Features), May 9.

Other Odeon summer/fall highlights include American Splendor (Fine Line), the big prize winner at Sundance ’03; Bitter Fame (Focus), starring Gwenyth Paltrow as poet Sylvia Plath; and a wide 200-plus run on Nov. 21 for Guy Ferland’s Havana Nights (‘Dirty Dancing 2’). Other late fall releases include 21 Grams (Focus), starring Benecio Del Toro, Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Gliserman is also hopeful for Isabel Coixet’s My Life Without Me (El Deseo/Good Machine), a Canada/Spain coproduction shot in Vancouver and picked up by Sony Classics.

Current business

Recent release highlights include Michael Moore’s Oscar-winning Bowling For Columbine, which opened in October and is close to $5 million in Canada, ‘far and away the highest-grossing non-concert doc in [Canadian] history,’ says Slone.

Current releases include Lynne Ramsay’s Scottish blowout Morvern Callar, an Alliance Atlantis film, and this year’s Genie Jutra Award winner, Keith Behrman’s Flower & Garnet (Screen Siren), released in the three keys March 28.

Also current is Lost in La Mancha (IFC), an ‘unmaking of’ story of the brutal collapse of production on the US$30-million Terry Gilliam feature project Man of La Mancha.

Odeon handles about 40 ‘art and specialized’ films annually, including product from Artisan Entertainment, Focus Features, Fine Line and IFC.

AAMPD handles Miramax Films and New Line Cinema releases. The balance of independent acquisitions is split between Alliance Atlantis and Odeon.

AAC also operates Alliance Atlantis Cinemas, a 24-screen chain of upscale cinemas in Canada, in partnership with Famous Players, a subsidiary of Viacom.

-www.allianceatlantisfilms.com