Vancouver: The trickle has become a flood. While some series tests have come and gone already this calendar year, Vancouver is officially in full pilot season.

In fact, at least seven pilots or presentations (short versions that won’t go to air) are up and running, two of which hail from the WB Network.

Going to California, a one-hour drama pilot by Columbia TriStar for wb, wrapped March 20. Starring Jason London (Carrie ii), newcomer Bridget Moyanhan and Abraham Benrubi (er), the series is about three friends from Boston who try to find another friend who has left to go to California.

Dead Last, meanwhile, is a one-hour pilot by Warner Bros. for wb. Production begins at the end of March on the story about a musical band that finds an amulet that allows them to see dead people. No cast was announced at press time, but we’re pretty certain Haley Joel Osment is not in the running.

Warner Bros. studio is also doing a presentation for a proposed series called Night Terrors, which could be, if successfully sold to Fox executives, a one-hour anthology series a la Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. Aiden Quinn appears in the pilot, which wraps March 30.

That brings us to Breaking News, a series pilot produced by the same people responsible for the latest iteration of Outer Limits – Pen Densham, John Watson and Mark Stern of Trilogy. This time the commissioning broadcaster is Turner Network Television and the story revolves around the demands of keeping a 24-hour news station going – though it’s not about Turner-owned cnn, stresses the show’s publicist.

Actor/director Ken Olin will direct; a cast was not announced at press time. Production runs March 29 to April 18 at Vancouver Film Studios.

The half-hour sitcom Ed wrapped March 22 and was shot for nbc/Viacom. Canadian actor Tom Cavanagh is in a roster of actors playing out a story about ‘starting over.’

nbc will also weigh the merits of News from the Edge, produced by Fox tv. In the proposed series, a journalism grad lands a job chasing alien stories for a tabloid and ends up, well, meeting aliens. Kind of a Men in Black-meets-The X-Files project.

Chris Carter’s so-called ‘light drama’ The Lone Gunmen, a spin-off of The X-Files, wraps production April 7.

* Features and brotherly love

Something About Mary producers Peter and Bobby Farrelly bring their particular brand of comedic film – this one is Say It Isn’t So – to Vancouver cameras April 3 to May 18. The production company would not release a synopsis at press time. However, the film is produced for 20th Century Fox, and stars Chris Klein (Election, American Pie), Heather Graham (Boogie Nights, Bowfinger), Oscar-winner Sally Field and Richard Jenkins (Snow Falling on Cedars, Me, Myself and Irene). First-time director JB Rogers has been the first ad on all four of the previous Farrelly brothers’ films.

Meanwhile, Mulberry Film’s Bill Vince – who hasn’t produced with brother Robert since leaving International Keystone to do his own film projects in 1998 – will take Replicant to camera April 2 to June 9.

Former Nothing Too Good For a Cowboy producer Ogden Gavanski – who calls his younger brother his inspiration – is making the low-budget film The Gateway. Written by commercial director/dop Wade Ferley, Gateway is a complicated story in which an Internet broadcaster airs the last concert of a heavy metal rock star from a plane that is hijacked and saved by an earthbound hacker.

Financed as a Canada/u.k. coproduction (Canadian Jamie Brown’s London-based Studio Eight Productions), the film has already sold Canadian, u.s. and foreign rights, says Gavanski (Milestone Productions) and will pick up the balance of the costs through tax credits.

* Reality VTV

Vancouver Television and parent company ctv have licensed a bundle of Vancouver-based documentaries that are at present doing the ctf funding fandango.

The biggest budget project in the works is the $500,000 shoot of The Orkney Lad: The Story of Isabel Gunn. Produced by Lael McCall and Penny Wheelwright (Wheelwright Productions), the hour-long documentary explores the life of the first European woman to set foot in Canada. Disguised as a man, Gunn came to the New World through the Hudson Bay Company. Dramatic reenactments add to the project’s cost.

At press time, producers were negotiating with Michael J. Fox to participate in the $300,000 documentary Countdown to a Cure. The project by Jerry Thompson (Raincoast Storylines) investigates the new medical approaches to Parkinson’s Disease.

Bob Duncan (Documentary TV Productions) will also produce a $300,000 documentary, Missing, an hour-long investigation of missing kids.

Productions in the $200,000-to-$250,000 range include: Cake Night, a one-hour by Scott Harper (in partnership with The Eyes Media) about an alcohol recovery facility; Made in China, a one-hour by Shan Tam and Karin Lee about the Canadian families who adopt girls from Mainland Chinese orphanages; and Cougar Crossing, a one-hour nature documentary about cougars on Vancouver Island and the speculation that some may carry hiv.

Lastly, K-9 Companions, a $150,000 30-minute documentary by new producers Erin Mussoleum and Michelle Welygan will fit into the new ctv stream W5 Presents, which will air indie docs in the primetime slot left open by W5’s hiatus.

K-9, which is executive produced by Crescent Entertainment, is about hardened female prisoners who train guide dogs for the disabled.

* Mountain remover

Gary Marcuse, documentary filmmaker and tireless community booster, is in post-production with Nuclear Dynamite, a coproduction between Face to Face Media and the National Film Board. Airing on cbc’s The Nature of Things this fall, the documentary will explore the penchant of industry and government to use nuclear devices to create harbors, move rivers and melt tar sands.

* Post mark

Painmaker Entertainment has been contracted to do digital effects for the James Cameron-produced Dark Angel, called one of the most expensive series pilots shot in Vancouver. Compositor Stephen Pepper, whose work was appropriately invisible in the miniseries Aftershock, is working with director David Nutter and visual effects supervisor Elan Soltes.

The pilot, a story about a pirate broadcaster, is Rainmaker’s first high-definition project.

Other Rainmaker jobs include the creation of a ‘semi-transparent alien organism’ for First Wave; time-travel effects for mow The Man Who Used to be Me; the fireworks effects for feature The Whole Shebang; and green-screen composites for the Kevin Costner/Kurt Russell feature 3000 Miles to Graceland.