Montreal: The head of motion picture production at Alliance Atlantis Communications says Canada has to play smarter if its stake in the movie business is to go forward. aac unveiled a highly British-oriented slate of movies at the 2000 Cannes International Film Festival, and motion picture production president Seaton McLean says the company is investing as much as $750,000 in development projects this year, including book options and hiring writers.

McLean says his entire staff is in high gear, meeting with Canadian writers and potential coproducers. ‘We’re open for business and we want to be making some good movies.

‘One of the things we want to do is broaden the scope of the movies we’re making in Canada,’ says the producer. ‘What has become known internationally as the Canadian film is defined by the likes of Atom Egoyan [The Sweet Hereafter] and David Cronenberg [Crash, eXistenZ], Patricia Rozema [Mansfield Park] and Jeremy Podeswa [The Five Senses], and obviously others. There is a good audience for that type of movie, more so in Europe than at home, ironically.

‘So we’re looking at balancing out those types of movies [aac recently announced a first-look deal with Podeswa]. At the same we’re trying to develop more commercially oriented movies with a more North American sensibility, be they thrillers or romantic comedies or comedies.’

Much of the slate introduced at Cannes is an outgrowth of a longer-term development deal with Natural Nylon and Company Pictures, two u.k. houses initially approached by the pre-merged Alliance Communications and producer Robert Lantos.

McLean’s meetings at the festival were aimed at financing the new slate through presales and international coproduction agreements.

2000 slate

aac’s 2000 movie slate includes:

* Morvern Callar, budgeted at $6.5 million and expected to shoot this fall/winter. Scottish director Lynne Ramsay wrote the screenplay and is expected to direct. Ramsay won the u.k. producer BAFTA Award for ‘most promising newcomer of 1999’ for her first feature Ratcatcher, a harrowing portrayal of life in inner-city Glasgow.

Morvern Callar is the story of a wild, Ecstacy-fueled trip from the highlands of Scotland to the nightclubs of Spain.

* The anticipated shooting date for Petticoat War, budgeted at around $12 million, is next spring. Described as a British period romp about an opportunistic French spy who penetrates the heart of the establishment in late 18th century England, the film will be directed by Mike Barker (The James Gang, Best Laid Plans).

* The target start-up date for Are You Experienced, budgeted in the $10-million range, is January 2001. It will be shot in India and is described as a romantic comedy about backpacking teenagers in India looking for love, sex and their ‘tantric’ centers.

The feature will be directed by Gurinder Chadha, who wrote and directed the Sundance entry What’s Cookin’ and Bhaji on the Beach.

* Fine and Mellow is in draft mode and is at least a year off, says McLean. It’s based on the true story of a love affair between Orson Wells and Billie Holiday and is set in New York circa 1940. Christine Vachon (Boys Don’t Cry, Velvet Goldmine Kids, I Shot Andy Warhol) of Killer Films will produce with Ruth Charney and aac. Hilton Als, the screenwriter, is slated to make his directing debut.

‘We want to go after as much marquee value as possible,’ says McLean

‘We are trying to find material in a budget range that is realistic so we can take it into the international market through our existing relationships and presales, as in the u.k., where we now have our joint venture with Kinowelt.

‘With Company Pictures and Natural Nylon, we are there from day one, optioning the properties with them and funding the development of those properties, coproducing – likely through the Canada/u.k. coproduction treaties – and then we’ll distribute worldwide.’

Meaningful development

McLean says it’s essential to get more meaningful development happening. Two Canadian movie projects are moving forward.

Steal This Life is a drama from Toronto’s Breakthrough Films and Television, with Steve Surjik slated to direct, while Priceless is a project from Toronto’s Sienna Films (New Waterford Girls). It’s the Helen Lee story of a Korean-Canadian woman who smuggles an illegal immigrant into Canada and has early interest from actors Adam Beach and Sandra Oh. McLean is also working with writer David Young.

‘Even with something like Steal This Life, which has received Canadian Telelvision Fund support and we hope will receive Telefilm [Canada] support, it will require the same sort of [smarter] thinking, and we’ll look to international sales to bring in some money for that budget,’ says McLean.

‘Smarter’ in Canadian terms is also likely to mean more resources, and McLean says from an aac international sales perspective, management would rather up the stakes for Steal This Life’s $3.5-million budget with an additional $1 million in financing to pay for talent.

aac has other features currently in development, including 51st State, starring Samuel L. Jackson, with Ronny Yu slated to direct; and Marlowe, another Natural Nylon project, with John Maybury directing.

aac has first-look arrangements in Canada with producer Robert Lantos of Serendipity Point Films (Sunshine) and Quebec producer Roger Frappier of Max Films (Un 32 aout sur terre).

aac has also announced a non-exclusive first-look agreement with l.a. producer and former president of Alliance Atlantis Pictures, Andras Hamori. aac will finance selected Hamori projects and Hamori will oversee the development and production of several films on the cuurent aac slate. ‘We have a contract with him to produce probably a dozen movies, however long it might take,’ says McLean (see ?Hamori?, p. ??).

The company recently announced a us$150 million ($225 million) production partnership with German distribution giant Kinowelt to develop and acquire motion pictures for the international market.

McLean says while the new movie slate is mainly partnered with the u.k. and financed primarily outside the u.s., that doesn’t exclude partnering with l.a. ‘We’re actually working on a couple of projects with American partners as well,’ he says. ‘We’re not excluding the u.s. It’s just that it’s not the primary focus at the moment.’

New talent for features

McLean agrees the public Canadian auteur tradition in movies has historically run counter to Hollywood’s approach.

‘If you look at the movies that come out of the u.s. as recently as last year, probably 85% of those movies could be described as ‘genre’ movies and 15% described as dramas. If you look at the Canadian side of the equation, it’s almost the reverse: 85% of the movies made in Canada are straight dramas.’

aac no longer receives development support from Telefilm, but McLean says, ‘I’m spending a bunch of money as quickly as I can to try to commission some original scripts from writers, half a million to $700,000. And that’s for optioning books and hiring writers to write drafts.’

McLean says most of the feature scripts funded by Telefilm are typically auteur-driven; consequently, many Canadian writers in features and tv have never been given a real opportunity to write for the movies.

‘There’s just been a bias towards the writer/director, and you know there are a lot of talented writers who don’t direct. At the same time there are plenty of directors who we would like to work with who don’t write.’

McLean has produced tv drama for more than 20 years. He was named head of motion pictures at aac on Jan. 7, but ‘didn’t show up for work much before March 1.’

He says his approach to developing and producing feature films will require the same kind of balancing act needed for tv.

Applies to Canada, too

McLean, who sits on aac’s board and is also a member of its executive committee, says some of the rethinking underway (better screenplays, bigger budgets, etc.) in the u.k. is imminently applicable to Canada.

‘The Film Council, this new body which is putting some money into the film industry, is saying similar things to what’s being said in Canada right now. We’ve got to move the stakes up a little bit and put more money into production, not only to get them made, [but] to better compete with eveything else that’s out there. The [anticipated] Copps fund certainly has this at the top of their agenda…to make more money available for marketing.

‘I wouldn’t have signed on for the job if we were going to be doing anything less than taking it totally seriously. We’ve got to do films that people are going to notice because there is so much material out there [in the market], so many titles that unless you’re doing something that really sings you are not going to get noticed,’ he says.

McLean’s team at aac includes exec vp Bill House, a former Telefilm director, and two senior vps with extensive movie experience, Ted East and Charlotte Mickie, the latter a veteran of 16 years ‘with a wealth of information and contacts’ in both production and international acquisitions.