Érik Canuel’s Bon Cop, Bad Cop has become la belle province’s first $10-million baby, surpassing 2002’s Séraphin: Un homme et son péché at the box office and, as Playback went to press, was closing in on all-time Canadian champ Porky’s, according to Motion Picture Distribution.

Jim Sherry, executive managing director at MPD, says the action comedy starring Patrick Huard and Colm Feore has, as of Sept. 11, pulled in $10.3 million in ticket sales nationwide since bowing on Aug. 4.

That edges out Séraphin and its $9.6 million, and puts the bilingual film produced by Kevin Tierney on target to surpass the highest-ever Canadian box-office booty for a domestic film – the $11.2 million for Porky’s, which Sherry expects to top by the end of the month. Of course, Porky’s accomplished that feat back in 1982, and went on to gross more than US$111 million in North America, whereas, due to the provincial nature of its story, Bon Cop is likely to do the majority of its business in Quebec.

Nonetheless, it is cause for celebration for Sherry and his staff.

‘We’re on our way to claiming the number one [Canadian] film of all time,’ he says.

While continuing to play strongly in Quebec on around 100 screens through the Sept. 8 weekend, MPD has scaled back in English Canada, where the movie still has around 20 engagements – mostly in Ontario and Atlantic Canada, and mainly in urban centers.

‘The film is playing… less favorably in British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba,’ Sherry concedes.

Bon Cop had, as of Sept. 11, raked in $1.3 million outside of Quebec and another $900,000 in English-speaking markets within Quebec, for a cumulative take of $2.2 million in English-speaking Canada.

Although this is less than the distributor expected, Sherry estimates Bon Cop will eventually do between $2.5 million and $3 million in English-Canadian theaters, making it ‘a very successful story.’

Despite plans to take former executives Victor Loewy, Patrice Théroux and Paul Laberge to the courts, and with a potential company sale over its head, MPD has another potential domestic success on the horizon.

The distrib is gearing up for a nationwide release of the long-awaited Trailer Park Boys: The Movie on Oct. 6. The marketing campaign has already gone online (www.tpbmovie.com) with a trailer and photos from the movie, with daily blogs from the Showcase series’ disreputable lead characters Julian, Ricky and Bubbles. MPD plans a star-studded launch party for the movie, directed by Mike Clattenburg and executive produced by Ivan Reitman.

Meanwhile, Toronto festival opener The Journals of Knud Rasmussen is slated for a Sept. 29 release, also through MPD.