After 20 days on the ice, The Nightingale Company has wrapped its hockey MOW, tentatively titled Chicks with Sticks, and sent it into the editing suite with cutter Jim Munro. The pic – starring Jason Priestley and Margot Kidder – is due to air on The Movie Network and Movie Central this spring, followed by later runs on Super Ecran and the A-Channel station group.

Director Kari Skogland (Men with Guns) shot in Calgary through November and December, working under Toronto producer Debbie Nightingale and her coventure partner Nancy Laing (Jet Boy) of Alberta-based Earth to Sky Pictures. Christina Willings (Untying the Knot) is coproducer.

The $3.5-million pic stars Jessalyn Gilsig (Boston Public) as a small-town single mom who puts together an all-woman hockey team to take on the local men’s team, led by Peter Outerbridge (Men with Brooms). Kidder plays the supportive mother, Priestley is the love interest. Juliette Marquis, Tanya Allen, Vanessa Holmes, Michie Mee and Chantal Perron also star.

DOP Paul Tolton’s ability to skate and shoot at the same time made for some ‘amazing’ hockey footage, says Nightingale. ‘I can’t describe how he did it, skating for 12 hours a day – he was bobbing and weaving and crouching. He did an incredible job,’ she says.

Support for the pic came together shortly after Canada won the gold for women’s hockey at the 2002 Olympics. On top of the broadcaster presales, Chicks is backed by the A-Channel Production Fund, the Canadian Television Fund EIP and LFP, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Rogers Cable Network Fund, the Cogeco Program Development Fund, the CanWest Western Independent Producers Fund, Rogers Telefund, The Harold Greenberg Fund, and both federal and Ontario tax credits.

Nightingale thinks the pic, similar in some ways to Bend It Like Beckham, also appealed to Telefilm Canada’s newly commercial tastes. She hopes a Chicks series could be in the works within the year.

Meanwhile, her outfit is prepping 13 halfs of Get Out of Town, a teen travel show for TVOntario expected to shoot in the spring, and is working on a documentary series for Toronto 1. The company is also attached to the new YTV toon Zixx Level One, through its partners at Toronto’s Savi Media. It debuts Jan 17.

Savi, meanwhile, is casting two feature films expected to shoot this summer. The company has teamed with the U.K.’s Talisman Films to copro Was, a dark look at Dorothy’s life after the events of The Wizard of Oz, based on the book by Geoff Ryman. Laurie Lynd will direct.

Savi is also attached to Subotica Films of Ireland to make Tillsonburg, a drama set in the southern Ontario tobacco town to be helmed by that country’s John Lynch.

CFC okays Head

The next project to come through the Canadian Film Centre’s Feature Film Project will be Head Games, a thriller from writer Wil Zmak and director Paul Fox slated to shoot in Toronto early this year. It’s about a young psychiatrist held prisoner at her cottage by a former, and presumably uncured, patient. Brent Barclay (Marion Bridge) is producer.

The fifteenth FFP movie ‘isn’t afraid of being ugly, in the best sense of the word,’ according to program head Justine Whyte. ‘This film will be a significant debut and have audiences glued to their seats.’

The shoot is budgeted at between $250,000 and $500,000.

Sutherland wraps Aurora

At press time, work was wrapping on the indie U.S. picture Aurora Borealis, which shot in Toronto through most of November and December, bringing Donald Sutherland back to his old stomping grounds along with first-time director James Burke. The pic has Joshua Jackson (Dawson’s Creek) as a young man who bonds with his ailing grandfather, Sutherland, and the old man’s nurse, played by Juliette Lewis. Louise Fletcher and Steven Pasquale also star.

Taavo Soodor – who worked recently on The Man Who Saved Christmas and Owning Mahowny – was production designer and Anne Dixon, fresh from the set of Saint Ralph, did the costumes. The pic was lit by Alar Kivilo (Hart’s War) and produced by Scott Disharoon and Rick Bieber under the banner of Front & Centre Productions.

Rethink goes global

Over at Arctic Jungle Productions, producer Susan Boshcoff has gone international for the third season of the travel show Exploring Horizons. Together with DOP/editor Alen Milic, she covered 10 countries on three continents last year – shooting footage of remote locations in Chile, Costa Rica and Canada – and have been looking for sales beyond OLN, which aired seasons one and two. A deal is now in the works with Iran, through Media Bank. Exploring Horizons is distributed by re:think entertainment.

The show is privately funded. ‘We’re a little crazy. We’ve been very creative with our finances,’ says Boshcoff.

Fox shoots terrorists

Fox TV Studios and U.S.-based Carnival Films are in Toronto until next month shooting The Grid for BBC and TNT. The six-part copro series stars Dylan McDermott (The Practice) and Julianna Margulies (ER) as the U.S. half of an elite anti-terrorism unit. Two British leads have not yet been cast. Mikael Salomon (Band of Brothers) directs, under producers Tracey Alexander and Brian Eastman. Tina Grewal is production manager. The Grid will also shoot in London and Morocco, before airing on the U.S. cable channel later this year. BBC has not set an airdate.