Nova Scotia is hosting several major service productions this summer, attracting big-name stars including Billy Bob Thornton, Milla Jovovich, Rob Lowe and Julia Ormond. However, the story of the summer is the feature adaptation of the homegrown comedy series Trailer Park Boys, which brings together the best in Canadian TV comedy with one of the big screen’s most successful comedy talents.

‘It’s my belief that [the Trailer Park Boys] are funny enough and special enough that, presented properly, they could work all over the world,’ says Ivan Reitman, the film’s executive producer. The Canadian ex-pat’s Hollywood resumé includes blockbuster laughers Animal House and Ghostbusters.

‘They’re wonderfully sympathetic characters,’ he adds. ‘They may be doing harsh things sometimes. They may be anti-social sometimes, but in the end it’s an extended family story that, as human beings, we can all relate to.’

The California-based filmmaker has joined TPB creator and producer/director Mike Clattenburg and local producers Barrie Dunn and Mike Volpe on the 45-day shoot in Nova Scotia.

While neither Reitman nor Clattenburg would reveal any plot details, Reitman did let slip that the feature would include some nudity. Hollywood has proven that nudity can sell, but does anyone really want Ricky, Julian or Bubbles to give us the full monty?

For many Canadians, an hour-and-a-half with the ne’er-do-well Sunnyvale gang should prove an easy sell, but Clattenburg has to introduce The Boys to a whole new audience south of the border. Reitman, with quite a box-office track record behind him, is confident the movie will play to American viewers.

‘Canadians have been translating our comedy to Americans for decades now, and we’ve done a damn good job of it,’ says Reitman, whose career blossomed in the ’70s and ’80s alongside those of Canadian comics Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Dan Aykroyd and Rick Moranis. ‘I think the Trailer Park Boys could be just the latest in that great Canadian export.’

The film started to make headlines last fall when Reitman attended the Atlantic Film Festival to announce that he would executive produce. It was the first time he had been in Halifax since he was five years old and immigrated to Canada from Czechoslovakia via the city’s Pier 21.

For the past nine months, Reitman and Clattenburg have been collaborating with stars Mike Smith (Bubbles), Robb Wells (Ricky) and John Paul Tremblay (Julian) on the script, and strategizing how to adapt the low-budget series for the big screen.

‘It’s a deeper and more realized version of what we’ve been doing for the last five years,’ says Clattenburg. ‘We have to introduce our characters to a new audience, yet stay true to the Canadian fans who brought us to the dance. We have to look at it from the position of someone who is watching for the very first time.’

One of the main differences between working on the series and the feature, according to Clattenburg, is time. While shooting the series, nine to 10 pages of script will be shot in a day, whereas only two to four pages a day will be shot on the feature.

Clattenburg says shooting on 16mm film will help retain an indie spirit, while allowing for more coverage than if they had shot on 35mm. (The series is shot on the cheap on miniDV, which only adds to the show’s naturalistic feel.) As with the series, the extra coverage gives the actors freedom to improvise.

To Clattenburg, the movie is hardly a stretch for his fictitious trio of beloved felons. The characters, he says, were originally conceived for a feature, but ‘they just got to television first.’