CTV in the Black

Toronto – Albert Schultz and Lara Flynn Boyle are in town this month for the second half of the Shades of Black shoot. The bio of embattled press tycoon Conrad Black is booked at the Dufferin Gate studios until mid-November, with Schultz (Drive Time Murders) in the lead and Boyle (Twin Peaks, Vegas) as Lord Black’s wife, Barbara Amiel Black.

Also in the cast are Jason Schombing (Cool Money) as Black’s longtime and recently indicted colleague David Radler, and Amy Price Francis (Our Fathers) as Shirley, Black’s first wife. Jason Priestley also appears as a fictional investigator.

The $5-million MOW got underway in the U.K. early this month, filming exteriors, gala balls, the lovebirds’ wedding and the strike at Black’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. It was to begin filming locally on Oct. 19 and will shoot for one month in Toronto, Hamilton, Galt and Cambridge.

Alex Chapple directs for a bevy of producers including Mary Young Leckie and Heather Haldane, both of local outfit Screen Door (Shattered City, Prom Queen), and Gub Neal and Justin Thomson-Glover for Box TV, Screen Door’s partner in the U.K.

Chapple (Torso: The Evelyn Dick Story) is working with DOP René Ohashi (Saint Ralph), production designer Tom Bider (Terry) and composer Christopher Dedrick (Torso, Childstar). The script comes from Andrew Wreggitt (In the Blue Ground), based on the book Shades of Black – Conrad Black: His Rise and Fall by Richard Siklos.

The movie tells Lord Black’s life story through a series of flashbacks going back to his boyhood.

‘He’s a character of very complex, tragic and epic proportions,’ says Leckie. ‘I think the script and the film will do very good service to that.’ She adds that, due to the ongoing legal investigation into Black, the production needed to buy plenty of insurance, even though it felt it was on solid ground with its research.

The project is backed by CTV’s Heroes, Champions and Villains stream, BBC Worldwide and Screen Door. Delivery is slated for mid-February 2006, with a local airdate expected soon thereafter. Sean Davidson, with files from Mark Dillon

Fall brings Indian Summer

Monreal – Getting the controversial story of the 1990 Oka crisis right is crucial to Montreal producer Claudio Luca, who leapt at the chance to make a two-part miniseries on the event when he was approached by the CBC.

‘It seemed to me that many people still didn’t understand what happened there,’ says Luca of Ciné Télé Action. ‘People remember that image of a soldier and a native facing off against each other, each trying to stare the other down. What this was really about was a group of people trying to stop developers from building a golf course and parking lot over a burial ground.’

His Indian Summer: The Oka Crisis started shooting in and around Montreal on Sept. 18 and wraps on Nov. 7.

Luca says a key to the $7-million production was getting a native director at the helm. ‘We really wanted this to be authentic, and we wanted the story to be told with understanding.’

That meant hiring award-winning Métis filmmaker Gil Cardinal (Totem: The Return of the G’psgolox Pole, Big Bear), who both directed and wrote the screenplay. Luca says a key part of the screenwriting process was constant consultation with the Mohawk community of Kahnesatake, ensuring that as much detail of the incident would make its way into the four-hour dramatic rendering.

Luca says enough time has gone by to give Oka the dramatic, made-for-TV treatment. The producer behind such controversial programs as The Boys of St. Vincent, Duplessis’ Orphans and The Last Chapter says that natives were treated ‘with great disrespect’ during the summer-long armed stand-off, and feels this film will help set the record straight.

Shot by Georges Archambault and produced by Luca in collaboration with the CBC and Canadian Television Fund, Indian Summer will air in 2006 on CBC and Radio-Canada. The cast is a veritable who’s-who of native talent, including Gary Farmer, Tantoo Cardinal, Ben Cardinal and Alex Rice, as well as Tony Nardi and Eric Schweig. Matthew Hays

Daughters wraps

Calgary – The made-for-cable western epic Daughters of Joy wrapped its 45-day shoot on Oct. 21. Produced by Calgary’s Nomadic Pictures, L.A.’s Once Upon a Time Films and Butcher’s Run Films, the $15-million 2 x 120 miniseries is about ranchers moving horses from Oregon to Wyoming who encounter a group of Chinese women enslaved into prostitution at a mining camp. Daughters producer Robert Duvall stars with Thomas Hayden Church (Sideways), with veteran helmer Walter Hill (48 Hours) directing. It is earmarked to air on AMC next summer. Dustin Dinoff