JB’s Drowning goes to camera

Montreal – Producers Josée Mauffette (False Pretenses) and Jean Bureau (Jean’s Fate) went to camera April 11 on Drowning, the latest MOW from prolific Montreal prodco JB Media. Shooting continues in and around Montreal until May 4.

The thriller stars Kristy Swanson (Dude, Where’s My Car?) as a troubled woman who returns to her family home to escape her controlling husband. She has not been there since she was six years old, when tragedy struck her mother and aunt, and is forced to confront haunting memories to learn the truth about her past.

Drowning will air on The Movie Network, Movie Central and Super Ecran, with delivery planned for September. Richard Roy (Over the Edge) helms the $3-million MOW, which draws on tax credits only. Stephen Greenberg (Bang), Bureau and Anne Carlucci (Wicked Minds) executive produce, with Serge Denis line producing. Laura Bracken

Guns, guitars and the wild northwest

Regina – Newly formed Regina production company Prairie Threat Entertainment is working on a pilot for its first major production, The Land of the Yodeling Mushroom People, a 13-ep half-hour comedy series hopeful currently in development.

Principals Shannon Jardine and Terry Mialkowsky left Vancouver’s film and television industry last year to launch Prairie Threat. The pair say they chose Saskatchewan partially because Yodeling Mushroom People is set in the province’s north, and also because they are both natives of Saskatchewan.

The comedy/western introduces Foxy, an up-and-coming country and western singer from the backwoods town of Torch River, SK. Her career is backed and promoted by her father and his gun-toting gang of farmers, outlaws and post-urban misfits, who will do whatever it takes to help Foxy become a star.

The approximately $300,000 pilot, backed by SaskFilm, is written and directed by Mialkowsky, with Jardine writing and producing. It was the success of a short film of the same name that encouraged Independent Moving Pictures’ Gail Tilson to come on board as executive producer of the pilot. As an emerging producer, Jardine says mentorship by an established producer like Tilson (The Dinosaur Hunter) is proving invaluable to the project. Laura Bracken