Montreal dressed for The Jacket

Montreal: Montreal recently suited up as Vermont for The Jacket, a feature film produced by George Clooney, Steven Soderbergh and Peter Guber (Batman, RainMan). The Warner Independent Pictures and Mandalay Pictures project divided its 44-day shoot between Montreal and Glasgow, Scotland, where Scottish Screen and the Glasgow Film Fund provided support. Shooting wrapped at the end of March.

The Jacket, directed by the U.K.’s John Maybury (Love Is the Devil) and written by Massy Tadjedin (Leo), is a psychological thriller about a military veteran played by Adrien Brody (The Pianist) who returns to his native Vermont, suffering from bouts of amnesia. He ends up in an asylum, meets a woman (Keira Knightley, Love Actually, Bend it Like Beckham) in his dreams and foresees his own death. The cast rounds out with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kris Kristofferson.

American DOP Peter Deming is attached, as is Montreal-based art director Isabelle Guay. Executive producers include Ori Marmur and Peter E. Strauss from Mandalay, Ben Cosgrove and Jennifer Fox from Section Eight Productions, and Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban from 2929 Entertainment. Warner Independent Pictures will distribute the feature in the U.S. and Canada. JL

The face of Evel

Toronto: CSI star George Eads will camp out at Toronto Film Studios this month with helmer John Badham (The Shield) for the six-week shoot of Evel Knievel, playing the death-defying 1970s icon for TNT, Jaffe/Braunstein Films and Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions. Gibson exec produces with Bruce Davey, Michael Jaffe, Howard Braunstein and Jan Korbelin. The U.S. cabler is fast-tracking the pic, not to be confused with the Knievel project in the works at Universal, to air by late summer. SD

On the House

Vancouver: X-Men director Bryan Singer is back in Vancouver – not yet with the anticipated X-Men III feature, but as director and executive producer of a new medical drama for Universal Television and Fox.

Tentatively called House, the series tracks the comings and goings of a maverick and non-conforming physician called Dr. Greg House, who regularly clashes with the hospital administrator.

In the one-hour pilot, which wraps three and a half weeks of production April 15, the good doctor’s diagnosis of a teacher uncovers a few twists.

Hugh Laurie (Stuart Little), Omar Epps (Against the Ropes), Robert Sean Leonard (Dead Poet’s Society), Lisa Edelstein (What Women Want) and Jennifer Morrison (Final Cut) star. IE

Duff love

Toronto: Universal has sent director Mark Rosman to Toronto to shoot Hilary Duff’s next picture, The Perfect Man. Duff, last seen in Canada for the Vancouver shoot of The Lizzie McGuire Movie, plays a teen looking to set up her single and as-yet-uncast mom. Toronto Film Studios will host the shoot through June. Dennis Chapman is production manager, working under producers Marc Platt, Dawn Wolfrom and Susan Duff, the young star’s real-life mother SD