Filmmakers Damion Nurse and John Buchan last month raised the flag of their new production company, On the Stroll Productions, with news of its debut feature film Sugar, now shooting on locations in and around Toronto with high-wattage locals Sarah Polley, Maury Chaykin and Saul Rubinek. The $500,000 pic is based on the short stories by area media darling Bruce LaBruce and was adapted for the screen by director John Palmer (Wolf Boy) and Todd Klinck. Jennfier Jonas (Perfect Pie) is exec producer.

Newcomer Andre Noble stars as a troubled suburban teen, Cliff, who hooks up with a hustler (Brendan Fehr) from the mean, rainbow-spangled streets of Toronto’s gay ghetto. Haylee Wanstall (The Safety of Objects) plays his sister and Marnie McPhail (The Associates) his hip soccer mom. Polley shows up as a drug dealer.

Nurse says he and Buchan were drawn to the ‘gritty realism’ of the script. ‘It exposes kids and teens as they are living in the world today. And at the same time, it tells an emotional and compelling love story.’

Buchan is best known as a casting director for projects including Choice, Ararat and The Virgin Suicides. Nurse was a development exec at Alliance Atlantis until the January 2002 layoffs and last year produced the low-budget short Minor Adjustments with Michelle Nolden and Gavin Crawford.

Telefilm Canada chipped in on this one, as did The Movie Network, Movie Central, The Harold Greenberg Fund, Showcase, The Independent Film Channel and THINKFilm, which will distribute across Canada. Shooting in the burbs and downtown wraps mid-month, and it is hoped a rough cut will be ready before the Toronto International Film Festival deadline.

Everybody loves Moose

Director Donald Petrie (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) is already back in Toronto, and this time he brought along Ray Romano and Gene Hackman .

The trio is here, with US$25 million of 20th Century Fox money to shoot the comedy Mooseport – fitting, given that this city has been littered with countless life-size fiberglass moose since our dubious tourism campaign of 2000. It’s about a small-town shopkeep, Romano, in a race for the mayor’s office against Hackman’s retired U.S. president.

Shooting runs until June and Fox has penciled in the release for next February. David Coatsworth (The Tuxedo, My Big Fat Greek Wedding), writer Tom Schulman (Holy Man) and Marc Frydman (The Contender) produce.

Life after deaf

Toronto’s marblemedia is carving a niche in the kids market with deafplanet.com, an educational Web and TV project now in the works at Studioasis for TVOntario and Access Alberta. The 10 x 5 live-action series – about a planet where everyone, except one stranded spacefarer and his robot sidekick, speaks in sign language – will debut at July’s World Congress of the Deaf in Montreal and air this fall.

Noted kids director Wayne Moss (Fraggle Rock, Big Comfy Couch, The Muppets 30th Anniversary Special) is working for producer Mark Bishop, as are writers Phil McCordia and Geordie Telfer, and story editor Jeff Sweeney. Mablemedia partner Matt Hornburg is creative director and deafplanet.com is coproduced with the Canadian Cultural Society of the Deaf.

Seems like everyone owns a piece of this $1.2-million show: funding came from TVO, Access, the Shaw Television Broadcast Fund, the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, the children’s multiplatform Licence Fee Program at CTF, Telefilm Canada’s New Media Fund and the TELUS New Media Learning Fund.

The marblemedia boys are also developing, with the unfortunately named Sinking Ship Productions of Toronto, the ‘fast-paced musical adventure’ series This is Daniel Cook, starring the cherubic five-year-old seen recently in ads for Jell-O and CIBC. Two broadcasters have expressed interest in the pilot, says Bishop.

Also in the works with Casablanca Media is Harmony Hotel, a 13 x 30 preschooler series, again to be shot by Moss. If fall funding comes in from the CTF, Shaw and Film New Brunswick, it will shoot with $2.6 million this winter on the East Coast. Lots of puppets will find work on this show, which is set at an inn staffed by all sorts of weird critters, along with song-and-dance troupe Kids at Heart.

Lads of the dance

Hamilton, ON is home to a new reality/entertainment series, and producers Noreen Halpern (The Awakening) and Morgan Elliott (Paragliding in Chile) of Blueprint Entertainment and Suddenly SeeMore Productions, respectively, are recruiting Canuck men to dance half-naked in 13 half-hour eps of Strip Search.

Like the British film The Full Monty, and the New Zealand series from which the formatting rights were bought, the Bravo! series will recruit 20 guys and, over the summer, shape them into a six-man ‘almost-bare-it-all’ traveling dance troupe. The bills (equipment rentals, film stock, thongs, etc.) are paid in part by CHUM Television.

Flack attack

U.S.-based Never Time Productions is doing work for ABC Family this month – shooting the cable feature This Time Around on location around Toronto. The four-week shoot, a comedy about a publicist out for revenge on an ex-flame, is helmed by Doug Barr and produced by Mark Winemaker (Martin and Lewis) and ABC’s Joel Rice (About Sarah). Carly Pope and Sara Rue of Popular star with Brian Green of Beverly Hills 90210.

Whew!

TV viewers heaved a collective sigh of relief early this month, when it was revealed that the atrocious ’70s sitcom The Trouble With Tracy is not being remade. Ads and press releases for the ‘new series’ turned out to be an April Fools prank, courtesy of those magnificent bastards at The Comedy Network. With any luck, a similar punchline will soon explain away The Sean Cullen Show.