Lynn Hendee, president of Los Angeles-based Chartoff Productions (Rocky, Raging Bull), says she’s piecing together two movie projects already attached to Hollywood studios — Wolfgang Petersen’s Ender’s Game and Julia Taylor-Stanley’s Nothing But the Blues.

‘Do you want to hear a genuine Hollywood fantasy story?’ asks Chris Teeter, coordinator of the Canadian Music Café. ‘Last year, Molly Johnson got up on stage and sang three songs. At the end of the third one, an American music supervisor… went out to Queen Street West where he could get a cell phone signal, made a call and placed her in the closing credits of a film.’

Network confirms that, after a year on sabbatical in France, its SVP of dramatic programming has left to ‘pursue another challenge’

Motion Picture Distribution reshaped as Alliance Films with the AAC vet in the big chair, and up against former colleagues Robert Lantos and Patrice Théroux

Canada’s box office hit $362 million this summer, up 12% from last year thanks to a very strong May and late-season surprises including The Simpsons Movie and Superbad

New creative director to be named from within CBC ranks, to work under Kirstine Layfield

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Broken Trail win craft awards, while Toronto’s Xenophile Media wins for Fallen Alternate Reality Game

Kids series headed to the Netherlands, Malaysia and Singapore

Telefilm Canada’s executive director Wayne Clarkson says critics should not to compare watermelons to grapes when discussing box office sums of Hollywood versus Canadian films.

‘She traveled even less than George Bush,’ said Cate Blanchett, star of Elizabeth: The Golden Age, making a political comment in stark contrast to the philosophical tone dominating the news conference for the film, the second part of a planned trilogy begun with Elizabeth in 1998.

Charlize Theron was the first to read actor-turned-director and longtime beau Stuart Townsend’s script for the political drama Battle in Seattle, and says she was hooked right off the bat when the pages, still hot from the printer, were handed to her in their kitchen.

Toronto’s unofficial film market heated up Saturday with ThinkFilm and TVA Films combining to acquire the North American rights to Helen Hunt’s Then She Found Me for $2.5 million. The romantic comedy, Hunt’s directorial debut starring herself and Colin Firth, came to ThinkFilm by way of a first-look deal with Killer Films, the producer of Then She Found Me.