Montreal: Muse Entertainment is fine-tuning its production strategies, expanding its relationship with Toronto producer Bernie Zukerman with prospects for more production in Montreal and an entry into feature film coproduction in the year ahead.

While Muse produced more than $100-million worth of TV movies, series and miniseries, including proprietary shows, coproductions with German, French and British partners, and service shows for major U.S. TV networks in 2001, president Michael Prupas says the emphasis is ‘on the quality and the quantity will come afterwards.’

Muse has ended its partnership with Pebblehut Productions of Toronto, but maintains ties with Dogwood Pictures in Vancouver.

Following The Investigation and Savage Messiah, Prupas and Zukerman’s Indian Grove will coventure on a third TV movie in March with producer Kim Todd of Original Pictures, Winnipeg. Jerry Ciccoritti will direct The Many Trials of One Jane Doe, the true-life story of a woman who is raped and subsequently establishes a legal landmark by suing the Toronto police for using her as ‘rape-bait.’ The screenplay is by Karyn Walton. CBC will broadcast.

This year’s holiday season took on the allure of a Muse movie showcase. Seven TV movies produced by Muse premiered in Canada between Dec. 25 and Jan. 8, including four Tales from the Neverending Story movies, which aired on The Movie Network and Movie Central; The Stork Derby, broadcast Jan. 8 on Citytv and CKVU and airing on CBC later in 2002; and two CTV premieres, The Sign of Four and The Royal Scandal, starring Matt Frewer as Sherlock Holmes and Kenneth Welsh as the good Dr. Watson.

Prupas says the 13-hour Neverending series – shot in HD and coproduced with The Movie Factory of Munich, Germany and licensed internationally to TF1, Hallmark Channel in the U.S., TVE in Spain and RAI in Italy – may be repurposed for 22 half-hours.

Prospects for a new round of Neverending Story seem likely, ‘but we have to reposition the project in the U.S. market,’ says Prupas.

Muse is developing four or five Canadian TV movies and miniseries for the new year, and despite ‘a very tough market,’ Prupas hopes to enter feature production with European partners.

Muse Distribution International, headed by VP Sonia Thibault, will be present at NATPE in Las Vegas, Jan. 21-24.

Laure makes directorial debut on Les Fils de Marie

Multitalented Quebec diva Carole Laure is the lead, cowriter, coproducer and director of Les Fils de Marie, a Canada/France feature film coproduction which wrapped recently in Montreal.

Laure plays a seriously discouraged woman who begins an unusual search to replace her only child, killed in an accident. Danny Gilmore, Daniel Desjardins, Felix Lajeunesse and Jean-Marc Barr are also featured.

The screenplay is by Laure, who produced for Productions Laure Furey, and French producer Pascal Arnold of Toloda.

Investors include SODEC, Telefilm Canada, distrib TVA International, Canal+ and Flach Film.

Fournier directs The Book of Eve

Filming continues at Cine-Cite Montreal through to Jan. 18 on the majority Canada/U.K. feature film coproduction The Book of Eve. The movie stars Claire Bloom, Daniel Lavoie (one of the stars of the smash legit musical Notre-Dame de Paris), Susannah York, Julian Glover and Marie-Jo Therio in a story about a wealthy 60-year-old matron who leaves it all behind for a new set of wacky neighbors, friends and romance with a much younger man. Bloom (Limelight, Crimes and Misdemeanors) recently received a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Claude Fournier (Le Silence empoisonne, Juliette Pomerleau, J’en suis) is directing from a screenplay written by Terri Hawkes and himself. Producers are Marie-Jose Raymond of Rose Films and David Pupkewitz of Focus Films in the U.K. The exec producer is Andre Link. Ivan Strasburg is the DOP and Gaudeline Sauriol is the production designer. The budget is $6.3 million.

Christal Films will distribute The Book of Eve later in the fall of 2002. Lions Gate Films is handling worldwide sales with the exception of the U.K.

New Quebec features

The Quebec operations office of Telefilm Canada has announced selective support for three new features through the Canada Feature Film Fund. The projects are: Le Piege d’Issoudun, director and producer Micheline Lanctot of Stopfilm; the animated Pinocchio 3001, director Claude Scasso, producer Jacques Pettigrew of CineGroupe; and Le Gout des jeunes filles, director John Lecuyer, producer Anne-Marie Gelinas of Production Jeux D’Ombres.

Festival dates for Nuit de Noces

The Cinemaginaire box-office hit Nuit de Noces continues its international festival roll with invitations from the Palm Springs International Film Festival, Jan. 10-21, Journees cinematographiques de Soleure in Switzerland, Jan. 15-20, and the Budapest Film Festival in March.

Producer Denise Robert says there’s interest in the U.S. to do a remake of the romantic comedy, which is distributed by Films Seville and is the year’s top-grossing Canadian film with receipts of more than $2 million.

Nuit director Emile Gaudreault and playwright Steve Gallucio have completed a big-screen adaptation of Gallucio’s successful coming-out stage comedy Mambo Italiano. Cinemaginaire says the film will shoot this summer.

The house is in post on Denise Filiatrault’s (C’t’a ton tour, Laura Cadieux, Laura Cadieux…la suite) third feature film, L’Odyssee d’Alice Tremblay, a satirical, grown-up fairytale starring Sophie Lorain as a disillusioned working-class mom, Martin Drainville as a failed Prince Charming and Pierrette Robitaille.

Craft credits go to screenwriters Sylvie Lussier and Pierre Poirier, DOP Pierre Gill, art director Michel Proulx, costume designer Francois Barbeau, composer Francois Dompierre, sound recordist Yvon Benoit and picture editor Ivann Thibodeau.

Distrib Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm anticipates a summer 2002 release.

Cinematheque wins Prix Boomerang

The Cinematheque Quebecoise has won the 2001 Prix Boomerang for arts and culture with its virtual exposition De Nanouk a l’Oumigmag – Le cinema documentaire au Canada. The 250-page, 1,000-image audiovisual multimedia production (www.nanouk.ca), named in honor of documentary pioneers Robert Flaherty and Pierre Perrault, chronicles 100 years of production in Canada, in both French and English.

De Nanouk a l’Oumigmag was produced in association with the National Film Board, with support from the Canadian Heritage museum program, The Film Reference Library, the Toronto International Film Festival Group, Pacific Cinematheque and the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology.

Selective credits go to Pierre Veronneau and Alain Gauthier of Cinematheque Quebecoise, Bill Kemp of Strata360 and John DiGironimo of Pure Cobalt.

More than 400 pieces (websites, CD-ROMs and interactive advertising) from 125 companies were submitted to this year’s seventh edition of the Prix Boomerang, organized by Editions Info Presse.

From Dec. 20 to Feb. 3, the Cinematheque (www.cinematheque.qc.ca) is presenting Brave Films, Wild Nights: 25 Years of Festival Fever. The event includes a poster exhibit from The Film Reference Library collection of 8,000 film posters and a screening program made up of the 25th anniversary Preludes series and noteworthy festival premieres from directors Jean-Jacques Beineix, Denys Arcand, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Pedro Almodovar, Werner Herzog, Steven Soderberg, Lee Tamahori, Jean-Luc Godard, Atom Egoyan and others.