Toronto filmmaker Jody Shapiro has signed on to co-direct eight new Green Porno titles for U.S. broadcaster Sundance Channel.

Written and conceived by Isabella Rossellini and commissioned by Sundance Channel, the original series featured the actress re-enacting the mating rituals of various garden fauna, including the snail and the earthworm. The new series will see Rossellini venture into the sea alongside new playmates: the shrimp, squid, anchovy, barnacle, limpet, starfish, elephant seal, angler fish and right whale.

Rossellini says that while the new films will continue the methodology of the first series — combining scientific accuracy with visual humor — they will also contain an environmental message.

‘Because of what I learned in doing research for this series, I felt strongly that there needed to be an added environmental element to really inform people how delicate the futures of these creatures are,’ she says.

Rossellini and Shapiro recently returned from a research trip to the Patagonia region of southern Argentina, where they observed and filmed elephant seals. The male can weigh as much as four metric tons.

Rossellini first worked with Shapiro on Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World, which Shapiro produced. The three went on to collaborate on My Father’s 100 Years Old, a tribute to Rossellini’s father, the late Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, written by and starring Rossellini, directed by Maddin and produced by Shapiro. As well, Shapiro shot and edited Rossellini’s short Oh La La as part of Sundance Channel’s initial mobile video project. Last year, Rossellini directed herself in the first three Green Porno titles; Shapiro co-directed the next five.

The duo will produce the eight new films with Rick Gilbert in association with Sundance Channel. Gilbert also art directed the original series. Those episodes were also notable because of the work of production designer Andy Byers, who created the human-scale versions of the creatures alongside the matching and functioning (if not anatomically correct) costumes worn by Rossellini. Byers returns to the project with an additional credit for original music.

The original series premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival, before screening on the Sundance Channel. The second series does not have any festival dates as yet, but Sundance Channel expects it to premiere on its website in April 2009. FremantleMedia Enterprises is selling world rights for TV, Internet and mobile.