Despite market headwinds, Peace Arch Entertainment is pressing ahead on the film releasing and TV production fronts across the North American market.

Toronto-based Peace Arch, now led by turnaround specialist Gerry Noble, has hired former Alliance Atlantis and Blueprint Entertainment executive Marla Ginsburg as a consultant to help develop new TV series, based in Los Angeles.

‘From a distribution point of view, there’s minimal risk. And we’re lining up broadcasters and some gap financing,’ Noble explains.

Peace Arch, whose credits include the Canadian/Irish coproduction The Tudors, currently has around 40 TV projects in development, both stateside and with all major Canadian networks.

Ginsburg is working under Peace Arch president and COO John Flock, who has been freed up to focus on TV development after Noble, a former Canwest exec, replaced co-chairman Jeff Sagansky at the company helm.

Sagansky stepped in as interim CEO a year ago with the sudden departure of former Peace Arch CEO Gary Howsam.

Aside from TV dramas, Peace Arch also produces factual programming via its Vancouver-based production arm The Eyes.

On the movie distribution front, Peace Arch has received a green light from Telefilm Canada to begin to tap marketing subsidies from the Canada Feature Film Fund.

Despite getting into North American movie distribution in November 2007, Peace Arch has not been able until now to release Telefilm-financed titles domestically.

It now intends to release Canadian titles here in all media before possibly distributing homegrown movies into the foreign market.

Next up for the theatrical distributor is the Nov. 14 release of JCVD, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Here Peace Arch is looking to fill a void left by several studio specialty distributors and indie players that have shut down or scaled back amid a saturated market for indie titles and an approaching recession.