After two years in development, Amaze Film + Television has just wrapped its first feature project Saint Ralph, an ‘overcoming impossible odds’-type heart-warmer about a teenage boy running the Boston Marathon.

The pic was developed by the Toronto prodco with Telefilm Canada and Harold Greenberg Fund money under the working title Longboat and Me. It is being coproduced 50/50 with Alliance Atlantis and shot in Toronto, Cambridge and Hamilton with just over $6 million to spend. AAC’s Odeon Films and Vivafilm will distribute in English and French Canada, respectively, AAC International will handle world sales.

It is one of the few times, says Amaze principal Teza Lawrence, that AAC’s distribution outfits and its production arm have all worked on the same outside project. The picture was shopped at Odeon earlier this year and was soon passed up the ladder, where it caught the eye of international sales head Charlotte Mickie.

Lawrence thinks the story will play well at the box office. ‘This is a film that’s very commercial. It’s got a lot of heart and it can appeal to a mass audience. We think we can get as many bums in seats as possible.’

She and her partner Mike Souther produce with Odeon’s Marguerite Pigott and AAC’s Seaton McLean, Andrea Mann and Peter Sussman. The Movie Network, Super Ecran, Movie Central and the Corus Family Film Program also chipped in. Mike McGowan directed his own script alongside DOP Rene Ohashi (They, The Crossing).

The movie stars Adam Butcher (The Pentagon Papers) as Ralph Walker, a 14-year-old boy living in 1950s Hamilton, who dreams of going the distance in Boston. Campbell Scott, Gordon Pinsent and Jennifer Tilly also star, along with Shauna MacDonald, Tamara Hope and Michael Kanev.

Amaze previously turned out the short-lived sitcom Patti, which played on The Comedy Network last year.

Lawrence says the company is now in advanced development on two new shows – the doc series Frosh and a drama called Sugar Shack – and is still pursuing The Real Truth About Animals, with comic brothers Jason and Ryan Belleville, for Comedy. Amaze and exec producer Susanne Berger also have writer Kelli Benz at work on another feature, Finn on the Fly, about a Frisbee-playing dog.

Back to the box

Geometry nerds will get a third Cube movie sometime next year, now that Cube Zero has wrapped and been handed off to Toronto effects house Mr. X.

The pic is a prequel to both Vincenzo Natali’s hit Cube and last year’s little-seen Hypercube, and again follows a gang of strangers as they puzzle their way out of a giant killer polygon. Zachary Bennett (The Bay of Love and Sorrows), David Huband (Ace Lightning), Stephanie Moore and Michael Riley (Punch) star, working for writer/director Ernie Barbarash (Hypercube).

Natali, who made Cube at the Canadian Film Centre in 1997, has had no involvement with the sequels. CFC sold the sequel rights for a princely sum to Lions Gate, which in turn handed the production reins to Barbarash, Suzanne Colvin-Goulding (American Psycho 2) and Jon Goulding.

Cube Zero is the first movie turned out by the trio’s newly formed Mad Circus Films, based in New York and Toronto. Dennis Berardi and Eric Roberts of Mr. X are coproducing, and Aaron Weintraub heads the effects. Francois Dagenais is DOP and Norm Orenstein is doing the music.

Hypercube never made it into Canadian theaters but it sold in Europe, the U.S. and parts of Asia. Lions Gate will send the third one straight to video.

CFC takes Hostage

Speaking of the Canadian Film Centre, the next pic from its Feature Film Project will be Hostage, a thriller from rookie writer/director Cassandra Nicolaou and producer Howard Frailberg.

Michelle Nolden of Men with Brooms stars as a young woman who is abducted by two street kids – Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps) and Kett Turton (Falling Angels) – and held at knifepoint at an isolated cottage. Pat McGowan is DOP, Saul Pincus (Direct Action) will edit.

Shooting runs through October around Toronto and Port Carling. The $500,000 pic is the fourteenth to come through FFP, following such notables as Cube, Rube and Khaled. Nicolaou’s shorts, Interviews with my Next Girlfriend and Dance with Me, have both played well on TV and the festival circuit, as did Frailberg’s feature doc Class Queers.

FFP’s previous film, the low-budget thriller Horsie’s Retreat by Tony Asimakopoulos, has been cut and will soon be shopped to distributors.

Novak and Gale reteam

W Network has ordered 13 half-hours of Allan Novak’s new dating show Second Time Around, so now all he needs is a season’s worth of older, newly single men and women. The ‘romantic comedy dating series,’ shooting next month in Toronto, will bring together singles from the 40-plus demo to ‘explore the true nature of dating.’

David Gale, ex of Novak’s cooking show Loving Spoonfuls, will host and Novak will direct, shooting on a $60,000 per ep budget at a charmingly rundown mansion in nearby Mississauga. The project is backed by the W fee and tax credits and slated to air near Valentine’s Day.

Although the cooking show is no more, Novak shot a Loving Spoonfuls Christmas Special earlier this month in King City, also for W. Eight of the most popular grannies from the series swapped stories and recipes to the tune of $80,000.