Much like the subject of his next project, Pat Ferns will cover a great deal of territory this winter to make Captain Cook, a four-hour mini about the famed explorer set to shoot across Canada, in the U.K., Tahiti, Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia.

The Canada/Australia copro comes from the book Captain Cook: Obsession and Betrayal in the New World by Vanessa Collingridge, and went to camera earlier this month in Nootka Sound, BC.

‘The theme of the series is that maps make power and power leads to empire,’ says Ferns, on the phone from his Vancouver office. ‘You could say Cook was one of architects of the British Empire.’

Although best known for putting Australia and New Zealand on the map, Ferns notes that Cook also explored Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence River, charting the latter for the British during the run-up to the Battle on the Plains of Abraham.

‘He actually found his métier in Canada.’

The $3.5-million project is a copro between his Ferns Productions and Cook Films – a joint effort by December Films (Revealing Gallipoli) of Australia and South Pacific Pictures (Whale Rider) in New Zealand.

It will air here on History Television, likely as a main attraction of the 2007/08 season, and Down Under on ABC and Prime Television.

Ferns has been busy with various docs and financing deals since exiting as CEO of the Banff Television Festival in 2004.

‘What we want Ferns Productions to do is concentrate on blue-chip miniseries,’ he says. ‘I’m no longer wanting to focus on small one-off kind of productions.’

The project comes from John Barnett of South Sea and stars Matt Young in its recreations as Cook. Wain Fimeri (Revealing Gallipoli) is directing from his own script, under producers Andrew Ferns and Tony Wright.

Ferns exec produces, but was not on set for the start of the shoot. He was in Ottawa, being inducted into the Order of Canada, so his son Andrew, formerly of Insight Film Studios in Vancouver, kept an eye on things instead.

The pair are also working together on The Dark Ones, a thriller script penned by the younger Ferns for which the elder is helping to secure financing.

‘When he told me he’d written a script for a zombie movie I said ‘Well, I’ll read it,” Ferns recalls with a mock groan. ‘It’s the last thing I’d ever want to see, I thought.

‘But it was a terrific piece of writing and it’s got a very complicated father/son relationship in it in which the son has to kill the father,’ he deadpans.

Gareth Jones, formerly of the U.K.’s HandMade Films, has been brought in to help finance a possible Canada/U.K. corpro.