Vancouver: With its boffo box office, mutant thriller X2: X-Men United has blown away that niggling West Coast production doubt that you can make a cheap feature in Vancouver, but not one that makes bundles of money.

On May 13, North American box office for 20th Century Fox’s X2 was US$153 million after opening May 2. That doesn’t include the rest of the world, either. Its opening weekend worldwide was more than US$155 million.

That box-office performance should make X2 the biggest movie by far to come out of Vancouver crews, outdoing Miramax’s first Scary Movie from 2000 with US$157 million in domestic box office, TriStar’s Look Who’s Talking from 1989 (US$140 million), Disney’s The Santa Clause II from 2002 (US$139 million), Paramount’s Double Jeopardy from 1999 (US$117 million) and Sony’s Jumanji from 1995 (US$101 million).

And it could be the first of a trend of big box-office generators, with hopes pinned on Scooby Too, I, Robot, Paycheck, Riddick and Catwoman, which are all now winding their way through the Vancouver film community.

Human sushi

Australian Elizabeth Sanchez and American Paul Ziller, domestic and producing partners in Artsy Fartsy Pictures, moved to Vancouver and have developed a specialty in low-budget, Canadian-content action features. First Avalanche Alley (a 2001 TV movie with Ed Marinaro), then Firefight (a 2003 feature with Stephen Baldwin), now Snakehead Terror, commissioned by the U.S. Sci-Fi Channel.

The $2-million ‘creature horror’ show, directed by Ziller, riffs on the true story about the snakehead fish, a menacing, omnivorous, land-traversing fish that has invaded American lakes.

In the MOW, in production June 2-26, Bruce Boxleitner (Babylon 5), Ottawa resident Carol Alt (Grownups) and Vancouver’s William B. Davis (The X-Files) do battle with growth-hormone-enhanced, mutated snakeheads that roam out of B.C.’s Cultus Lake to feed on, as Sanchez puts it, human sushi.

As in Firefight, Vancouver’s Artifex Studios is handling the visual effects and post-production. Vancouver-based Healy FX Studios is making the animatronic, sushi-hungry snakeheads.

Sitcom and stay

With Slice o’ Life, comic actress Janeane Garofalo and Universal Network Television are bringing the first U.S.-style, three-camera sitcom format to Vancouver. The ABC pilot (aka the Untitled Janeane Garofalo Project), shooting at Paramount Studios in Vancouver June 2-6, tells the story of a female producer at a TV newsmagazine. The pilot will shoot on film without a studio audience. No other talent was signed at press time. Not grounded after all

AT first, teen soap Edgemont was one of the many Canadian productions left off the Licence Fee Program subsidy list. Then it all turned around with almost $800,000 from Telefilm Canada’s Equity Investment Program May 6 and, the next day, the surprise of $650,000 from the LFP after all. With the CanWest Western Independent Producers Fund and the Shaw Television Broadcast Fund, the fifth season will be fully funded and production should begin at CBC’s studios in November. All the major cast members are expected to continue.

Therefore art thou

Producer Larry Sugar (No Equal Entertainment), a catalyst for production growth in Vancouver with Dead Man’s Gun, Just Deal, So Weird, First Wave and more recently the nudie cooking show Barely Cooking, is producing the Nickelodeon family sitcom Romeo until the end of September.

Starring rapper Lil Romeo, the 20 x 30 series is about an ethnically diverse family and the kid who wants to be, uh, a rapper. Victoria Jackson (Saturday Night Live) plays the nanny. Master P (Hollywood Homicide) also stars, along with local actors Zachary Williams, Erica O’Keefe, Noel Callahan (My Brother’s Keeper) and Brittney Wilson (Connie and Carla).

Goodbye Toronto

Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl, an MOW remake of the 1977 Oscar-winning feature about a divorced mother whose boyfriend leaves town without explanation, will shoot six weeks in Vancouver (until July 4) and then move to New York for a week of exteriors.

Simon, an executive producer on the TNT/Warner Bros. Television project, has made updates to the story for the 2003 version, which stars Jeff Daniels (The Hours), Patricia Heaton (Everybody Loves Raymond) and Hallie Kate Eisenberg (Bicentennial Man). Richard Benjamin (Marci X) directs.

The production was originally budgeted for Toronto, says co-executive producer Ron Ziskin, but was moved to Vancouver since the SARS outbreak. While SARS was not a real concern, he says, there was no need to put the worry in the heads of the cast members. ‘Besides, I like working in Vancouver,’ he says, with Showtime’s Stealing Sinatra his last foray here.

Goodbye Girl is shooting at Lions Gate Studios.

Etc.

* Comedy Night in Canada, a send-up of hockey by Vancouver-based Destination Funny Entertainment, aired May 16 as a one-hour special on CBC. Created by comedian Will Davis, who was raised on hockey in Quebec, the show began as a live theatre project, was taped for CBC Radio last year and was taped for television in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Halifax.

* Victoria’s May Street Group will celebrate May 31, the day its half-hour drama Smudge from 1997 plays at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as part of the premier Sprout Festival (which is dedicated to raising the profile of people with developmental disabilities) and its new documentary To Free the Slaves plays at the Amnesty International Film Festival at the Directors Guild in Hollywood.

* Two productions from Vancouver’s Titan Pictures have been picked up for international distribution by Montreal-based Domino Film and Television International: The Terrible Old Man, a 33-minute suspense thriller from 2001, and the 2002 documentary Chris Woods: Billboard, about the Chilliwack, B.C.-based painter.