Montreal: Muse Entertainment Enterprises and The Movie Factory of Munich, Germany have started production on the 13-hour adventure fantasy The Neverending Story.

Director Giles Walker (Princes in Exile, Little Men, Emily of New Moon) says the show ‘has heart – quality drama, warmth, humor and empathetic characters. But we’re dressing it with fantastical elements and special effects.’ The series is being shot in Sony CineAlta High-Definition and is budgeted at close to $20 million using cutting-edge design and techniques including matte paintings, models, mechanical trompe l’oeil and cg special-effects.

The star is 12-year-old Mark Rendall (Olivier, Screech Owls), in the role of a highly imaginative boy who enters a magical world called Fantasia and confronts a dark, unimaginative force known as The Nothing. The series is based on the Michael Ende novel The Neverending Story. To date, three feature films have been adapted from the property, but the Muse/Movie Factory series is the first live-action adaptation for worldwide television.

The Neverending Story is an official Canadian/German co-production. Exec producers are Muse’s Michael Prupas and Rolf Schneider of The Movie Factory Film GmbH. Dieter Geissler, producer on the feature films, is series’ creative producer. The producer is Irene Litinsky. Supervising producers and writers are David Preston and Leila Basen. The other screenwriter is Karen Howard. Craft credits go to dop Daniel Villeneuve, line producer Michel Chauvin, costume designer Renee April, production designer Collin Niemi, casting agent Andrea Kenyon and Associates and cgi producer Big Bang FX/Animation.

The Neverending Story will be edited in half-hour, one-hour and eight two-hour packages.

Prupas says coproduction continues to be an essential framework for content production, especially in view of the significant producer deficits required for network programming in the u.s.

Muse Distribution International is distributing in Canada and is the sales agent in France. Hallmark Entertainment has rights in English-track international markets including the u.s. and the u.k. Shooting at the Ice Storm Studios goes through to the end of August.

*Rezolution Pictures’ cross-over mission

The latest production from Rezolution Pictures filmmakers Ernest Webb and Neil Diamond is the one-hour documentary Cree Spoken Here. The show examines the status of the Cree language is three Northern Quebec communities and was taped over three months as the filmmakers met with people living and working on trap lines and in ‘goose’ or traditional hunting camps. Producer Catherine Bainbridge (In Search of the African Queen: A People-Smuggling Operation) says the production reflects ‘a new wave of aboriginal talent’ as the house positions itself as a ‘cross-cultural’ program supplier to aptn as well as other tv and new media networks. Webb and Diamond, raised in the Cree communities of Chisasibi and Washaganish, respectively, were able to ‘get in at the source and grassroots with archival material the rest of us had no idea existed,’ says Bainbridge.

Rezolution, which also includes producer Joanne Robertson (Jess Goes West), has a slew of projects in production or development, at this point primarily for aptn.

Bainbridge and Webb are producing and directing The History of Kanada, or Did you hear the one about the traveling Indian agent? – a wry and informative look at Canadian history from the Native perspective. The series of six half hours has received development support from Telefilm Canada and aptn, and draws on a mix of documentary and comedy talent to pronounce on six defining moments in Native history. It’s budgeted at $600,000 with an anticipated start in March. Bainbridge is also talking to History Television and Historia about a second window.

Diamond and Webb are prepping for a spring start on the provocative one-hour doc Journey to Sovereignty, a look at the Cree’s plans to solve the country’s endless constitutional bickering by creating their own territorial state. Rezolution and aptn are also developing Indian Time – a satirical half-hour current events mag in the Michael Moore/Roger and Me tradition. aptn will put up about $50,000 for a pilot slated to tape in March, but Bainbridge says the show probably needs a second licence.

Other Rezolution projects in early development include Censored Clips, a program about movie censorship around the world; Globalize This, an ‘entertaining’ doc profile of the street-smart protesters who have now added Quebec City to their agenda after rattling the gates of ‘fortress imf’ in Seattle and Prague. Also on tap: two documentary productions – an examination of the powerful international pr industry called The Wizards of Spin; and a project called Dip Dip and Swing, a look at the universal summer camp experience, past and present.

Bainbridge, a former cbc news reporter and Montreal – Women in Film and Television award-winner in 2000, is writing a children’s long form adventure-drama called The Magic Drum. She says the outlook for Rezolution is highly positive mainly because of new support from aptn licences and Telefilm’s Aboriginal production fund.

*Imavision buys the Henson catalogue

Doc series producer Imavision Productions’ latest critically acclaimed show is La Revolution Tranquille, a four-hour, comprehensive history of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution. The show, covering the period from 1960 to 1982, incorporates extensive archival footage and expert testimony from a Quebecois perspective.

Primary licensee for the $1.5-million series is Tele-Quebec. Reseau tva has a second window.

Imavision ceo Gabor Kertesz exec produced with Pierre Paquet. Chantal Bujold produced and Jacques Cossette-Trudel directed.

Always on the look-out for a good deal, veteran Kertesz reports the recent acquisition of French-track tv rights to the brilliant Jim Henson catalogue and shows such as Farscape, Bear in the Big Blue House, Fraggle Rock, Muppet Babies, The Puppet Show, Dr. Seuss and more. Remarkably, Kertesz says almost none of Henson’s shows has ever been broadcast in French in Canada.

A leading indie distributor of French-language videos in Canada, Imavision’s product line includes Les Schtroumpfs, Pokemon and the voluminous em.tv catalogue. *