Jim Erickson has found a new home at Breakthrough Films and Television and last week went into preproduction on Exchanging Vows, a reality wedding series for Toronto 1. The 12 hours will shoot in Toronto until late October and begin airing on the upstart station in early September.

The biggest challenge, says the former Alliance Atlantis exec, is finding 24 couples willing to participate. Each ep follows two engaged couples as they plan and carry out, based on only scant personal information, the other twosome’s ceremony. The pair that gets closest to the other’s idea of a dream wedding wins a free honeymoon.

Season one will cost $2.1 million, backed by licence fees and shot by director Josh Levy (Supermodels, Locker Room), with whom Erickson worked during his tenure at AAC’s Life Network. Second broadcasts will follow on Life.

Erickson is playing to his strengths at Breakthrough, and has two other reality/lifestyle shows in the works. He’ll shoot a half-hour pilot for Look Who’s Cooking in August and, with luck, go into production this fall for Food Network Canada. He is also putting together a bible and pilot for something called Design Match, and will take that to HGTV.

Meanwhile, Breakthrough is prepping to shoot The Toronto Show, also for Toronto 1, and has hired Gemini winner Luciano Casimiri (This Hour Has 22 Minutes) as creative producer and point man for the nightly hour-long variety show. Joining Casimiri is music producer Billy Bryans, an accomplished world beat musician and former drummer for the ’80s pop group The Parachute Club.

The pair expects to hire a host and house band by early August, and will then start live-to-tape production.

Smackdown for Jacob

Famed Canadian wrestler Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart has signed on as the voice of the Hooded Fang in Nelvana’s new animated series Jacob Two-Two, a 26 x 30 reworking of the famed children’s novel by Mordecai Richler. The new show is in the works now and will debut on YTV in early September. Hart, who also voices Jacob’s dad, is joined at the mic by Billy Rosenberg (The Berenstain Bears) and Fiona Reid (My Big Fat Greek Wedding).

Laura Shepherd directs on an undisclosed CTF-backed budget. Wendy Errington and Peter Moss, EVP of parent Corus Television, produce.

Producing the Caveman

KYRA Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon are in Toronto this month shooting Cavedweller for Showtime Networks. The Personal Velocity star headlines as a mother trying to reassemble her family in the wake of an abusive relationship, and also produces along with Orly Adelson and David Yudain.

The two-hour picture is based on the novel by Dorothy Allison, whose Bastard Out of Carolina was also reworked for the U.S. net, drawing four Emmy nominations in 1997. Both were adapted by Anne Meredith. Lisa Cholodenko (Six Feet Under, High Art) directs, flanked by first AD David McAree and DOP Xavier Perez Grobet. Michael Levine is line producer and Ted Miller is the production manager. *

Three for one

Kiss of Debt, the latest from Distinct Features, made its debut earlier this month at Montreal’s Just for Laughs comedy festival and the Ottawa prodco is moving towards a broadcast deal with The Movie Network and Movie Central, says principal Joanna D’Aneglo. The $1-million pic, shot by Derek Diorio and DOP Michael Tien, with private money and tax credits, was also recently picked up for domestic and international distribution by Toronto’s Unified Entertainment.

It’s the 90-minute story of three people trying to break free of their debt to a Mafia don, played by Ernest Borgnine. Stage phenom Tyley Ross (Tommy, Miss Saigon), Lorraine Ansell and screenwriter Dan Lalande also star. Diorio and Sarah Fodey produced with exec producers J. James Mackie and Deborah Mackie.

It is the last of three laughers Distinct shot back to back in 2000, following A Taste of Jupiter and Punch and Judy. The prodco cut costs but kept production values high, says D’Angelo, by sharing crew, suppliers and locations across all three shoots.

Their next picture will likely be Hell for Breakfast, a comic cannibal horror to be coproduced with New Zealand’s The Gibson Group and shot down there in 2004 for under $2 million. Distinct is waiting on another rewrite from Toronto scribes Brad Abraham and Joseph O’Brien and will put in for Telefilm Canada and The Harold Greenberg Fund cash to back their planned 30% share.

Shooting in New Zealand was cheap two years ago, says D’Angelo, but prices have ballooned since the success of Lord of the Rings.

Distinct is also developing Being Bethie Biddles, a series based on the kids book by Joanne Langlois, and a supernaturally tinged mother-daughter story, A Windigo Tale, from playwright Armand Garnet Ruffo. Windigo is expected to shoot in winter 2004.