After producing 37 TV movies in eight years, Incendo Media co-presidents Stephen Greenberg and Jean Bureau say they know enough about world TV markets to launch themselves into the high-end drama business, via Los Angeles.

As the latest Canadian fortune seekers in Hollywood, Greenberg and Bureau have hired former Lifetime senior programming executive Libby Beers as a development executive and Gavin Reardon, most recently IM Global Television president, as its international sales executive.

Besides stick-handling original movies for Lifetime for eight years, Beers earlier completed executive stints at Universal Television, Disney Television and NBC daytime dramas.

Both Beers and Reardon will be based in Los Angeles, with Anna Sue Greenberg remaining in Montreal as head of creative affairs.

The goal is to produce one or two dramas a year for Canadian, U.S. and international broadcasters.

‘The success of our [TV] films worldwide and the difficult economic climate has allowed us to look around and open up a Los Angeles office,’ as cost-conscious Americans increasingly turn to Canadians as coproduction partners, Bureau says.

The move also follows Incendo partnering last year as executive producer on the NBC drama Crusoe, a Canada/U.K./South Africa coproduction that Citytv aired in Canada.

Stephen Greenberg says the international TV drama business, with its intertwined coproduction financing, is complicated. But he says it’s a market Incendo can master given its track record in TV movies and industry contacts.

‘We have the luxury to sit back and nurture a project until it’s time to make it. We control our destiny in the TV and movie areas,’ he says.

Greenberg adds the Los Angeles satellite office will get Incendo closer to series scripts and partners. ‘Most of the time, we find our scripts because of meetings in Los Angeles,’ he adds.

The Incendo template for TV movies is typically a project with a $3 million to $5 million budget, directed in the summer by local Montreal talent and starring female leads between series shooting schedules.

Each movie has been sold in Canada, the U.S. and to major European markets, in part through output deals.

The latest Incendo telepic is Second Chances, a suspense thriller starring Melissa George of Grey’s Anatomy and directed by Jean-Claude Lord. It began production on July 13.

For drama production, Incendo will bring nearly half the series financing to the table, and rely on international coproduction partners to help fill out the rest of the budgets.

‘We have our own distribution pipeline, not only to Canadian broadcasters, but to bring in international presales,’ Greenberg says.

Incendo has two TV series now before U.S. studios and networks for consideration. The first is slated to go into production next year, likely a cable or pay-TV drama that Incendo can place in Canada with The Movie Network, Movie Central and Super Ecran.

‘Not that we wouldn’t do a U.S. network series,’ Greenberg says. ‘Our feeling is, the kind of material that better works worldwide is typically the pay or cable kind of series. You can get outside the typical box.’