After two years of collaboration, Toronto doc prodcos Infinite Monkeys and MicroTainment Plus have joined forces to create DocuTainment Productions, a TV and film company focusing on factual entertainment. Howard Bernstein of Infinite Monkeys says the move will simplify dealings with broadcasters and financiers. MicroTainment will continue as the company’s drama/entertainment arm.

Military Machines will go to camera on seven episodes in June for Discovery. A coproduction with New Brunswick’s Dreamsmith Entertainment, the show is based in Moncton, NB, and will shoot internationally, tracing the technology of warfare through the ages. Chris Terry produces on a budget of $2.8 million. The series will air after January.

For those who prefer to make love, not war, Will You Marry Me? follows couples as one plans to pop the big question in creative fashion. Produced by Jonah Stroh and Louisa Jaslow, the program will run a one-hour special June 4, followed by six half-hours starting in January, all on Life Network. Two of the special’s five segments have already been filmed, in Toronto and Quebec City. Richard Garner and Karen Pinker are directing on a budget of $100,000 per episode, with the special coming in at $250,000. As with most of DocuTainment’s projects, the show is captured on Sony DSR-500 cameras, whose two-hour tapes allow for uninterrupted shooting. Bernstein hopes to sell the show at MIPTV.

Life did not bite, however, on Fourplay, a reality series inspired by Sex and the City that shows four single Toronto women on the prowl for men. DocuTainment continues to shop the pilot to broadcasters.

Season four of Zoo Diaries, consisting of 30 half-hours, officially begins shooting April 15, at the Toronto Zoo. The show, whose new season will air on Life starting in July, follows the relationships among the animals, keepers and veterinarians. Bernstein, a former producer of Canada AM and senior producer of CBC’s The Journal, has brought his verite background to the show, boasting that no scenes have been recreated. Bernstein and Lon Appleby, another principal of DocuTainment, have produced and directed until now, but for this season Stroh and Richard Martyn will cohelm. Bernstein says DocuTainment is ‘very close’ to making a U.S. sale for the $2.5-million series.

Glenn Gould: The Russian Journey is an $800,000 one-hour special in post that will air on CBC in August. Russian-born Yosif Feygenberg produced and directed, shooting in Russia for two months. The doc tracks the pianist’s maiden voyage to the USSR in 1957, and how he remains an icon there.

DocuTainment is also in discussion with Toronto’s Opera Atelier to film one of the latter’s French productions for CBC’s Opening Night and Radio-Canada. Other projects in development include the self-explanatory Surgery Live, which would be shot in a Toronto hospital, and The Generals, in which host Major General Lewis Mackenzie will examine the military strategies of his favorite generals. History Television has committed to development funds.

The new company’s other two principals are Gary Blye, whose long list of TV producer credits includes Daring & Grace and Vampire High, and Mark Shekter, a prolific TV writer and exec producer of reality-based programs for A&E and others.

Sienna Films goes East

Toronto’s Sienna Films is ramping up for Marion Bridge, a feature coproduction with Bill Niven of Idlewild Productions to shoot in Halifax and Sydney, NS. Julia Sereny, partner at Sienna with Jennifer Kawaja, is presently on the East Coast preparing for the five-week shoot. Based on a screenplay by Daniel MacIvor (House) adapted from his own play, the film is directed by Wiebke von Carolsfeld, who previously helmed two short films and edited The Five Senses.

The low-budget drama concerns a dying East Coast mother and one of her daughters who lives in Toronto. The daughter returns home, precipitating the unraveling of family secrets. Kawaja characterizes the film as darker than Sienna’s successful copro New Waterford Girl, which also shot in the Atlantic region. Cast has yet to be confirmed.

Mongrel Media is distributing, and other funding comes from Movie Central, The Movie Network, the Licence Fee Program, Telefilm Canada, the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation and the Harold Greenberg Fund. Most post will be done in Ontario, looking at a delivery date at the end of the year.

Sienna is also in post on the low-budget feature Saint Monica, a copro with Sharon McGowan and Peggy Thompson of Vancouver’s Rave Films that shot last August for four weeks, in Toronto and B.C. The story concerns a young girl’s struggle to retain her connection to Toronto’s Portuguese community, which she leaves after her parents separate. Terrance Odette (Heater) is the writer/director, and the cast includes nine-year old Genevieve Buechner as Monica, along with Brigitte Bako, Clare Coulter and Maurizio Terrazzino.

With a delivery date in May, Seville Pictures is distributing with eyes on release in the next year. Also involved in funding are Telefilm selective and envelope money, Citytv, Movie Central, TMN, the CTF and the Harold Greenberg Fund.

Kawaja says Sienna is in development on several bigger-budget features in the $5-million to $40-million range, including a Canada/U.K. copro that would be written and directed by Ian Rashid. It is also putting together the financing for two TV projects for CBC’s Opening Night: adaptations of the plays I, Claudia, written by and starring Kristen Thompson, and Sibs, by Diane Flacks and Richard Greenblatt.

Amber Light to roll on SCI FI MOWs

Toronto’s young Amber Light Films is about to go to camera on the first of four MOW service gigs for the U.S. SCI FI Channel. Amber Light president Derek Rappaport (a former assistant director on Kung Fu: The Legend Continues and line producer on The War Next Door) successfully lobbied to have the projects come to town in favor of Vancouver. Part of the reason T.O. won out is because the area was deemed able to stand in for a variety of locations, including a mid-West small town, a large urban centre and the open road. The movies are each budgeted at US$2 million, with a shooting schedule of only 18 days. Rappaport is both producer and production manager on the projects.

To amortize expenses, the four movies will be shot back-to-back with a consistent production team. The productions are described as similar in tone to The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. The first, Devil’s Pass, is a contemporary story about an alien infiltration in a small-town airport during a snowstorm. It goes to camera April 22, helmed by American Sean Cunningham (producer/director of Friday the 13th), with a script by Lewis Abernathy (DeepStar Six). Canadian-based DOP Rudolf Blahacek (Cyberman) will shoot the project at Downsview Park, also the principal location for the soon-to-be released Jason X, which Cunningham exec produced. Exec producer on Devil’s Pass is Chuck Simon of RKO Pictures. Cast has yet to be confirmed, although the two leads will be American and the remaining cast Canadian. Delivery date is July 26.

Do or Die, written and directed by David Jackson (Witchblade), tells of a society where people age in a day unless they take a serum controlled by a power baron. Control Factor is about mind readers, and Deathlands is a Road Warrior-type story.

Financing was put together through various private U.S. sources. Amber Light is able to make these movies on such a small budget because of tier classification from NABET, IATSE and the DGC that allows members to work at discounted hourly rates and fringes.

‘We can’t pay people what they might have made two summers ago in the heat of [the production frenzy], but we are employing people,’ Rappaport says.

Rappaport says he plans for Amber Light to begin in the service sector and eventually move into proprietary production.

Portfolio launches animation division

Fueled by the international success of one its newest series RoboRoach, Toronto’s Portfolio Entertainment, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, has launched a new animation division. Under the banner Portfolio Animation, the company introduces two new series, now in development – Jerry’s Insane Fish, described as an offbeat half-hour series targeted at 8-12 year olds, and Carl, a topical and contemporary half-hour series about a kid who clones himself.

Portfolio’s chief executives Lisa Olfman and Joy Rosen say the two new series will be ideally suited to weekday morning and weekend kids program lineups.

RoboRoach has been renewed for a second season of 26 half-hours by Teletoon, bringing the total number of episodes to 52.

In other news, Portfolio has also launched a new acquisition fund that aims to attract world-class TV productions to its library of 500 half-hours. The production/distribution company is looking to acquire primetime, family, kids, lifestyle, travel, sports and reality genres at this year’s MIPTV, says Marina Cordoni, senior VP of distribution.