Canadian titles including Defendor, Splice, Chloe and the Paul Gross western Gunless are set to hit screens by winter’s end as distributors this week locked dates for the opening months of 2010.

E1 Entertainment will send Atom Egoyan’s Chloe into theatres on March 26, after the Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore-starrer bowed at the Toronto International Film Festival last year to positive reviews. The film is also set for a spring release stateside, though Sony has yet to set an exact date, where the film’s leads, which also include Amanda Seyfried, should sweeten the film’s commercial potential.

Chloe will go head-to-head with fellow TIFF selection Cooking with Stella, from first-time feature director Dilip Mehta, also set for March 26 through distributor Mongrel Media.

Peter Stebbings’ well-received superhero pic Defendor, starring Woody Harrelson, bows Feb. 19 through Alliance Films, and will face the Martin Scorsese thriller Shutter Island from Paramount. The film, which also played at TIFF, was nabbed by Sony, which again has not locked a release date.

April will see the arrival of a slew of titles including Vincenzo Natali’s long-awaited bio-horror Splice, Vic Sarin’s A Shine of Rainbows, and Sook-Yin-Lee’s Year of the Carnivore — all through E1. Ramping up to its April release Splice, featuring Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody, will debut at the Sundance festival later this month.

In time for spring, Alliance Films will send Paul Gross’ Gunless to theaters on April 30, where an extended box office run could be hampered by May tentpoles including Paramount’s Iron Man 2, which arrives one week later on May 7, though the films will likely court different audiences.

Meanwhile, Jacob Tierney’s acclaimed The Trotsky is set for a May 14 release via Alliance, where it will be up against Hollywood offerings including Universal’s reworking of Robin Hood, with Russell Crowe in the title role.

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