The closure of Halifax-based Salter Street Films did not slow Michael Donovan and Charles Bishop for long. The two former Salter principals launched a new prodco, The Halifax Film Company, in the city’s Electropolis Studios May 14, five months after parent company Alliance Atlantis Communications closed the doors on one of Halifax’s most productive companies.

In development at the new company is a feature film based on Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, a book written by retired lieutenant general Romeo Dallaire (also being produced as a documentary by White Pine Pictures in Toronto – see Film & Television, p. 15). HFC will also take on several former Salter productions, including the 12th season of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, season two of the preschool stop-motion animated series Poko, and is underway on the third season of Open Book with Mary Walsh for CBC.

Open Book went to camera in Halifax May 12. Alan MacGillivray produces the first 14 of 28 episodes, which will be completed by June. Production dates for the second 14 episodes have yet to be announced. Stephen Reynolds (The Divine Ryans) directs the low-budget series, which is funded entirely by the CBC. Executive producers are Walsh and Donovan.

Donovan cofounded Salter with his brother Paul Donovan in 1983. Bishop joined the company in 1998, three years before Salter merged with AAC and five years before the media giant closed Salter’s doors, citing a ‘permanent downturn’ in the demand for drama.

Between the two of them, Donovan and Bishop have produced some of Canada’s most successful film and television properties, including the miniseries Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion and the Michael Moore series The Awful Truth and feature doc Bowling for Columbine, as well as some of Canada’s best-known comedy series, Made In Canada and 22 Minutes.

Neither Donovan nor Bishop was available for comment before Playback went to press.