Toronto producers Elliott Halpern and Jack Rabinovitch have parted ways with Associated Producers and opened a new production company, Ace Pictures. Under their new banner, Halpern, a two-time Emmy and five-time Gemini winner, and partner Rabinovitch will be exploring long-form fiction in addition to a full slate of documentaries. During their tenure with Associated the pair was known largely for their documentary efforts like The Plague Monkeys (which Halpern produced, wrote and directed).

The first feature out of Ace will be The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, a film based on the novel by Wayne Johnston about former Newfoundland premier Joe Smallwood. Ace has secured the rights to the book, which Halifax-based screenwriter Michael Amo (Blessed Stranger: After Flight 111) has adapted for the big screen.

Toronto actor/writer/director Don McKellar (Last Night) is attached to direct and possibly star in the film. Halpern and Ace’s head of drama Brett Burlock will produce, with Jim Byrd on board as a Newfoundland production partner. According to Burlock, it is also expected that The Colony will be produced under the YAP banner, a joint venture between the Ace partners and U.K.-based Yorkshire Television cultivated in 1998, making it a Canada/U.K. coproduction.

Halpern says Ace is currently looking into development financing.

Matrix hits Toronto

Matrix Produxions, a new production company with a focus on documentary, docutainment and current affairs programming, has launched in Toronto.

Headed by Jill A. Mackie, formerly of Vasco 1 Images and more recently of Interactive Broadcast Ontario, Matrix is currently in the midst of cultivating coproduction opportunities with companies in Europe and the U.S. Mackie also has a verbal agreement with Toronto’s Marble Media to develop interactive programming.

In what will likely be the first official project out of Matrix, Mackie is in development on Child Soldiers: They Dance Alone (working title), a one-hour documentary about young soldiers, budgeted at approximately $500,000 with development money from private sources.

But the production has hit a few early snags, due mostly to the subject matter.

‘The majority of child soldiers are in Sierra Leone in Africa, and there is a lot of conflict over there right now,’ says Mackie. ‘I’ve been informed through contacts and research that just to go in there with a TV crew is exceptionally dangerous. There are snipers hired to hit foreigners.’

Mackie is considering directing the project, but nothing has been confirmed. She plans to begin shopping the concept around this month. In the meantime, she is looking into options for international and domestic distribution. She forecasts the doc will be completed by April 2002 and says there will likely be an interactive component produced in conjunction with Marble.

The Store to open for festival time

The Store, a new short film starring Patrick McKenna (Traders) from Toronto-based Sudden Storm Productions and Yucky Samson Productions, is currently in production in Toronto. The 30-minute film for WTN is based on the one-act play by Mavor Moore. Jeff Glickman, who adapted the stage play for the screen, marks his film directorial debut on the short.

For those unfamiliar with the play, The Store is about a woman who blames her problems on a store and its holier-than-thou manager, and how she confronts him with her theories on how the store is linked to all her shortcomings in life.

Producers are Sudden Storm’s Jesse Ikeman (a first-time film producer) and Justin Kelly (producer/director of the upcoming feature If Wishes Were Horses). Apparently, Glickman’s adaptation of the play impressed Moore to the point that he wrote an e-mail to the Canada Council for the Arts on behalf of the filmmakers as an endorsement for financial backing. The Ontario Arts Council, federal and provincial tax credits and private investment also contributed to The Store’s approximately $45,000 budget. First-time film actor Anna McKay-Smith costars.

The film will continue shooting until mid-January for delivery to WTN in the spring. The producers also plan to submit it to the Toronto International Film Festival and the Canadian Film Centre’s Worldwide Short Film Festival.

Phillips’ new projects may be Foolproof

Toronto-based screenwriter/director William Phillips is not taking much time to bask in the glory of his first feature film Treed Murray, which has garnered five Genie nominations this year, including one for best picture, as he’s already underway on two new features.

The first is Foolproof, a heist thriller in development with Alliance Atlantis Communications. Phillips’ screenplay, now in its third draft, is about a group of friends who meticulously plot out major robberies of banks, jewelers and essentially wherever there is a big payday. They never go through with the robberies, however, content in the knowledge that they could execute their plans and succeed if they wanted to. One day, someone steals their latest plan and pulls off a major heist. Fingers point in their direction.

Because of the success of Treed Murray, Phillips says he would consider getting behind the camera again for Foolproof if asked, although nothing has been confirmed yet, including the producer.

The second project in development is Gunless, with funding from Movie Central (also a backer of Treed Murray). This film is about an American gunslinger who finds his way to a small town in Alberta and, after an encounter gone wrong, challenges a local to a shootout. Problem is, there are few guns in the town, except for one broken, Civil War-era pistol. As the gunslinger works to repair the gun in time for the dual, he grows fond of the townsfolk and has second thoughts about the showdown.

‘Once the first draft is done, I’ll start shopping it around (for a producer),’ says Phillips.

Queer as Folk adds MacDonald, Fawcett

The second season of Toronto-based Temple Street Productions’ Queer as Folk premiered Jan. 6 on U.S. cable net Showtime and airs Jan. 21 on Showcase in Canada, and Temple Street producer Sheila Hockin promises another stellar lineup of directors for the series’ 20-episode sophomore year.

The show will once again showcase the directorial talents of Alex Chapple (Torso: The Evelyn Dick Story), John Greyson (The Law of Enclosures), Michael DeCarlo (Washed Up), Jeremy Podeswa (The Five Senses), Thom Best (Ice Men) and David Wellington (A Long Day’s Journey into Night).

New to the fold this year are directors John Fawcett (Ginger Snaps) and Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo), both of whom Hockin says were offered directing spots last season but could not commit at the time.

‘What we work very hard to do is create an environment where independent film directors, especially directors of this caliber, are happy to work,’ says Hockin. ‘We try to give a framework of roughly how the series is supposed to look and feel, but we really try to let each director come in and work their own strengths and interests inside that framework.’ Hockin says the episodes are challenging to produce because each is like a small independent feature.

Season two of Queer as Folk, produced in association with Warner Bros. and commissioned by Showtime, is budgeted at approximately $33 million.

Production booms in Ottawa

A recent report from the Ottawa caucus of the CFTPA entiteld Ottawa’s Film and Television Industry – A Business Development Strategy says the value of production taking place in Ottawa has steadily risen over the last five years by an average of 70% per year. It also states that in 2000, production hit an all-time high of $38.7 million.

According to the CFTPA, the percentage rate has exceeded the comparable percentages for Ontario (4%) and Canada as a whole (13%), suggesting the production industry in Ottawa will continue to grow in the next few years. *