Twice in the pages of Playback in about a year – in September 2002 and again last February – producer Robert Lantos threw down the gauntlet, challenging Canadian producers to step up and begin making audience-friendly feature films.

‘If there isn’t a significant improvement in getting Canadians to make seeing Canadian movies part of their movie-going habits, then it’s going to be really hard to keep arguing that Telefilm should keep pumping more money into the film industry,’ he said earlier this year.

For his part, Lantos has proven more than once that he can make audience-friendly movies, most recently Men with Brooms, which grossed $3.9 million at the Canadian box office. The key for Lantos is that he often works with stars, whether star Canadian directors such as Atom Egoyan or David Cronenberg, or popular actors such as Paul Gross and Ralph Fiennes.

The next few weeks mark a big test for Lantos with the release of Norman Jewison’s The Statement, which Lantos’ Serendipity Point Films coproduced with French and British partners.

With a budget reportedly approaching $30 million, Jewison in the director’s chair, Oscar winners Ronald Harwood penning the script and Michael Caine in the lead role, The Statement is playing in a league beyond your typical English-language Canuck feature.

Once again Lantos can show English-Canadian producers the way.

So far this year French-language cinema has utterly dominated the Canadian box office. But as is often pointed out, Quebec cinema is underpinned by a thriving star system and therefore has an advantage over English Canada. English-Canadian cinema, however, is not competing with the French-language market. It’s competing with the U.S. indie film market, one that also manages to offer top-caliber talent by way of directors and stars.

In 1998, Rhombus Media mined the same vein as The Statement with Francois Girard’s The Red Violin, piecing together an international copro so successfully – with Samuel L. Jackson as the marquee name – that the film’s Canadian origins were made irrelevant. It grossed $4 million in Canada.

Lacking a true star system in English Canada doesn’t make the need for stars any less important. English-Canadian producers are increasingly using international talent and no one knows the benefits better than Lantos.

Over the next few weeks The Statement will be rolled out across Canada on an estimated 70 screens, with the potential for more, if audience interest warrants.

It says here that it will.

Binch-marked: This issue marks the 200th Binchmarks contribution to Playback from the ever-knowledgeable and insightful lawyers at Toronto law firm McMillan Binch. The first column ran in September 1987. It would not be overstating it to say that Binchmarks played a huge role in establishing Playback’s credibility in a time that the film and TV industries were only just getting to know our name. Binchmarks continues to be an important part of Playback and a must read for a good many executives in the business.

Many thanks.