Vancouver: Perhaps Tarzan’s jungle yodel will roust up a few more pilots for Vancouver, which so far has few TV hopefuls confirmed this year, but apparently lots of interest.

Director/producer David Nutter (The X-Files, Dark Angel, Smallville) is once again behind a camera in Vancouver for production of the one-hour WB Network pilot of Tarzan (working title).

Calvin Klein model Travis Fimmel dons the loincloth in this modernized, urbanized update in which Tarzan’s wealthy uncle returns the ape-man from the jungle to New York. Newcomer Sarah Wayne Callies plays Jane, a detective. Laura Ziskin and David Gerber are executive producers.

Production runs Feb. 26 to March 20.

B.C. Film Commissioner Susan Croome says the service sector is looking healthy for 2003, with the pilot season set to outperform last year’s total of seven. In 2001, there were 11 pilots shot in Vancouver, a target Croome says might be matched.

‘It’s encouraging [compared to other years],’ says Croome. ‘We’re having some real success with features and TV is shaping up quite nicely. The whole television business is changing and it’s an interesting exercise figuring out how we can service that market.’

Warmed over

Veteran West Coast drama series Cold Squad (Keatley MacLeod/Alliance Atlantis) is getting warmed up for a surprise seventh season now that CTV has renewed the show. Improved ratings and a strong life in reruns have helped keep the series – which had struck its sets after this season’s finale – afloat, despite being perennially overshadowed by CBC series Da Vinci’s Inquest (Haddock Entertainment/Barna-Alper Productions). Production could begin this spring.

Family business

Local alternative music rocker Bif Naked takes on the role of hooker-thug in the low-budget Canadian feature Crossing, the story of the son of a mob boss trying to take his father’s business legitimate amid blackmail and ‘secret sexual desires.’

Sebastian Spence (First Wave) stars, while first-time feature director Roger Larry helms a script by his wife, Sandra Tomc, an English professor at UBC. Halifax native Kimberly Boyd (Parsley Days) is in Vancouver to produce.

Crystal Buble (Call of the Wild) and Alan C. Peterson (Narc) costar in the film.

The Movie Network, CHUM and Movie Central are on board with presales.

Pointe taken

WITH The Faerie Queen, Ballet British Columbia’s retelling in dance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Toronto-based producer/director Alan Burke is probably hoping to duplicate if not the style then the critical success of Guy Maddin’s dance film Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary.

Shot at CBC’s Vancouver studios as a coproduction with Vancouver’s Insight Film & Video, the one-hour Faerie Queen production promises to be an experimental experience, with John Alleyne’s choreography restructured for the television adaptation of the ballet. Production runs Feb. 10-21.

Blown away

Vancouver-based Avrio Filmworks and executive producer Michael Derbas are producing the low-budget thriller Devil Winds, the story of a tornado-chaser and the storms that blow through his life. Joe Lando (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman), Nicole Eggert (Baywatch) and Gerard Plunkett (Da Vinci’s Inquest) star in the production that wraps a whirlwind 19-day shoot Feb. 19. Vancouver poses as both Seattle and Oklahoma.

In 2002, Avrio did the teen horror Fallen Angels with Michael Ironside and the Joey Travolta-directed thriller The House Next Door.

Over the rainbow

Lower Mainland cable companies Shaw and Delta will air a new weekly television series aimed at B.C.’s gay and lesbian community. Out on TV, produced by Daniel Leipnik of Vancouver’s Vibrance Alive Entertainment, will be a half-hour, magazine-style program of current events, issues and news. Coverage will be dispersed, says Leipnik, with special emphasis on the suburbs and information for seniors, students and gay parents.

Out on TV begins airing in April. Previously, Vibrance Alive produced the Holocaust-themed documentary My Mother, My Hero.

Deal memo

Vancouver’s Yaletown Entertainment, churning out investor-friendly announcements of late, has concluded a ‘deal memo’ with American actor Frank Zagarino for three feature films and a 28-episode television series. A sequel to the 1999 action feature Strike Zone (for which Zagarino and new Yaletown chair David Dadon were coproducers) is one of the three feature titles and Wakeside is the title of the teen action drama series, based on the extreme water sport called wakeboarding.

Yaletown stock traded at $0.48 per share on the TSX Venture Exchange Feb. 5, compared to the year high of $0.55 and year low of $0.09.

Pip pip

Vancouver’s Studio B Productions is in production with seasons three and four of animated series Yvon of the Yukon, bolstered by a broadcast deal with the BBC, which is liking the audience numbers the series is generating.

At press time, the producers were voice-recording episode 45, with YTV scheduled to launch season three in June. The BBC will begin the new season later this year.

The first season of animated series Yakkity Yak, meanwhile, began airing on Teletoon Jan. 4. An Australian coproduction (with Kapow Pictures), YY is doing 52 11-minute episodes in Flash.

Teen spirit

Omni Film Productions’ teen soap Edgemont wrapped season four in January and has the green light from CBC for season five, which will culminate in a one-hour primetime special.

Returning for her fifth season is Kristin Kreuk, who is enjoying a dual career playing Laurel Yeung on Edgemont and Lana Lang on WB’s Smallville.

Other Edgemont cast includes Dominic Zamprogna, Sarah Lind, Vanessa King, Micah John Gardener, Elana Nep, P.J. Prinsloo, Richard Kahan, Grace Park, Meghan Black, Chas Harrison and Daniella Evangelista. Four new actors joined Edgemont in season four: Adrian Petriw, Brit Irvin, Vikki Krinsk and Andrew Robb.

More cooks

Increasing its counter space, Citytv Vancouver’s half-hour CityCooks in-house program will begin airing on The New VR Feb. 24 – increasing its potential audience by eight million. It will air in Toronto and Southern Ontario at noon.

CityCooks, hosted by Simi Sara and part of Citytv Vancouver’s slate of multicultural programming, explores culture through cuisine.

The show debuted last year and is already seen in Greater Vancouver and Vancouver Island.