It was years ago, back when he was teaching English at the University of Toronto, that Jon Slan first tried to adapt a novel, Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, for the big screen. Slan’s office just happened to be right next door to that of the CanLit legend and, one day, he popped in and asked about getting the rights.

‘I didn’t get very far,’ says Slan, recalling how Davies cut him off, in mid-pitch, and curtly referred him to his American agent. The movie never got made.

Slan (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) hopes to have better luck with his new company, Slanted Wheel Entertainment, and the handful of novels for which he has already secured the rights. The company’s core business is to be the adaptation of books and other literary sources for film and television, and it plans to start, pending approval from the Canadian Television Fund, with Friend of the Family: The True Story of David Snow. Lifted from the book by Alison Shaw, the $4-million MOW about the notorious ‘cottage killer’ is in development for CTV, coproduced by Slanted Wheel and Bright Lights Productions in B.C.

Next up will be the feature City of Ice, from the police thriller by John Farrow, to shoot in Montreal next winter for Alliance Atlantis. John L’Ecuyer (Curtis’s Charm) is in line to direct.

‘I think Canada has some wonderful novels that attract a worldwide audience,’ says Slan, citing Life of Pi as a recent example. Slanted Wheel has also optioned the screenplay Summer Hit by Montreal writer Jefferson Lewis and the comedy-drama Blizzard by Brad Luft, to be helmed by Jeff Beesley (Borderline Normal).

Alongside Slan and partner Lorne Weil in the company’s upper ranks is noted writer and journalist Rachel Rafelman, who handles the day-to-day development operations. ‘She reads even more books than I do,’ says Slan with a laugh.

A criminal mind

Red Apple Entertainment just got a 13 x 30 nod from Court TV for Masterminds, and hopes to soon secure a similar deal with Canada’s Life Network. The doc series looks at how notorious crooks pulled off, and almost got away with, famous heists and was sold to the U.S. channel on the strengths of a pilot shot last winter in Toronto. The series will cost $2.2 million and shoot in Toronto and the U.S. from May to February, says exec producer Tim O’Brien. Cameron Rothery produces and both Tim Wolochatiuk and Howard Wiseman are expected to direct.

Red Apple will also shoot season two of Opening Soon over the next 11 months. Su Rynard (Smoke and Mirrors) directs the 13 x 30 doc on a $1.3-million budget, with help from the Rogers Cable Fund, for Fine Living in the U.S. and The Food Network in Canada. Neither series draws government funding.

Wokka-wokka

Hmmm. Three weeks on the road with eight rookie comedians. That could be, depending on too many variables to list, a lot of fun or a road trip through all nine layers of stand-up comedy hell. Either way, the folks at Media Headquarters (Le Mozart Noir) and CBC will find out with Comedy Trip, an 8 x 30 doc series to shoot across Canada this summer.

Producers/directors Robert Cohen, Robin Neinstein and Shari Cohen will follow eight comics, to be recruited through Just For Laughs in May, on their first tour through Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and (if the money holds out) Vancouver. Fred Nickolitis exec produces for CBC.

‘They’ll all be very strong talent, emerging talent, but it’s their first time on the road,’ says Neinstein. No word yet on an airdate or budget.

The Toronto prodco is also developing The Summit for a shoot next year in Alberta. The 2 x 120 project, again for CBC, is a dramatic retelling of the G8 powwow and resulting protests that rocked the Alberta town of Kananaskis last year. John Krizanc (Men with Brooms) is pounding out a script, which follows lobbyists, protestors, politicos and corporate types through the two-day brouhaha. Media Headquarters will seek out international partners, a director and cast this summer.

A man called Horsie

Rookie director Tony Asimakopoulos and producer Karina Griffith just got a $250,000 cheque from the Canadian Film Centre and its Feature Film Project to make Horsie’s Retreat, a hallucinogenic thriller about a reformed drug addict to shoot next month in Toronto. This is the thirteenth project backed by the CFC, now 11 years old, and the fourth to come through its ultra-low-budget category.

‘Horsie’s Retreat is completely unlike anything the FFP has done before,’ says FFP exec director Justine Whyte. ‘We are extremely thrilled to be working with this talented team.’ Griffith, based out of Ottawa, coproduced the 2000 feature doc Beyond Pain and Asimakopoulos’ dramatic shorts have played well at fests in Toronto, Montreal and Melbourne, Australia.

In other CFC news, students of this year’s short dramatic film program get to post their projects with the Cinema DI process from Command Post & Transfer, the same digital intermediate process used on such films as The Cell and Spider-Man. The process transfers footage from the original negative to a high-res uncompressed digital format known as D6 – bypassing the negative cutting stage and streamlining the addition of digital effects. The CFC is the only film school with Cinema DI technology.