Gemini-Award winning producer Bernie Zukerman has flown the Cinar coop and struck an exclusive deal with Montreal-based Muse Entertainment to jointly find, finance and produce television projects for the Canadian and global marketplace.

‘This new relationship with Muse replaces the relationship I had with Cinar that couldn’t continue because the funding agencies won’t deal with them until their problems are rectified,’ says Zukerman.

Under the new agreement, Zukerman will develop and produce films and miniseries that Muse will finance and distribute.

After breaking free from his exclusive contract with Cinar last spring, and subsequently gaining control of at least eight projects he was developing with the animation house, Zukerman was up for grabs.

And while a handful of other companies – some much bigger than Muse, concedes Zukerman – bid for an exclusive deal with the renowned producer, he says, ‘Muse was the best fit.’

‘With Cinar, I had met Micheline [Charest] and liked her so I signed on with them. I felt the same way with Michael Prupas [Muse president]. Also, Muse is plugged into Europe through Pearson [International], they have production entities across the country, which I like, and there weren’t a lot of relationships like this with other people [at Muse].’

But before Zukerman landed at Muse, he struck a distribution deal with Salter Street Films on Chasing Cain, a $3.2-million film directed by Jerry Ciccoritti and written by Andrew Berzins for cbc.

The deal with Salter was a fast and hurried one, because last spring when the Cinar fiasco erupted and it was uncertain whether Telefilm Canada would consider financing Cinar projects through the ctf, Zukerman was left standing with two major projects – Chasing Cain and Savage Messiah – for which he was depending on the fund.

As a courtesy, Telefilm granted Zukerman an extra week to replace Cinar, in which time he attached Salter to Chasing Cain (which ended up receiving ctf funding), with the understanding that he was still in the market for a long-term partnership.

Zukerman’s agreement with Muse is indefinite and does not involve an equity deal, although ‘there is equity potential,’ says Betty Palik, Muse’s director of communications. The agreement does, however, give Muse copyright on all of Zukerman’s new projects.

Among them, Chasing Cain, which wrapped in Toronto Aug. 15 and stars Alberta Watson and Peter Outerbridge, is based on a series of true stories about Serbian/Croatian conflicts on the streets of Toronto.

Savage Messiah, a $3.5-million film directed by Ciccoritti for Showcase, is based on the true story of a Quebec cult that moves to Ontario to hide out from the Quebec government.

Suburban Motel, a $7-million, two-part miniseries for cbc, is described by Zukerman as a ‘sprawling sort of Altman-style Nashville/Short Cuts,’ written by George Walker and to be directed next summer by John N. Smith.

Zukerman, a nine-time Gemini Award winner and the first to produce a Canadian miniseries for American network television (Love and Hate: The Story of Colin and Joanne Thatcher), breaks another record with Revenge of the Land, the second Canadian miniseries to be bought from script by a u.s. network, cbs (his Million Dollar Babies was the first). ‘And what’s really amazing is that it’s a totally Canadian story,’ says Zukerman.

The western epic, written by Sharon Riis and directed by Smith, is a turn-of-the-century story about the history that brings together a poor family and the wealthiest family in a small Saskatchewan town. *

-www.muse.ca