When Toronto producers Paul Jay and Sally Blake of High Road Productions were planning to shoot a doc on the behind-the-scenes world of wrestling, they had no idea an unprecedented battle in the wrestling arena would emerge. And no clue the doc might lead to a dramatic feature with an American major.

The pair started out by following Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart and his wrestling family, which included eight boys who all became wrestlers and four girls who all married wrestlers.

Bret wound up in a struggle between one wrestling ‘league,’ the wwf, and the rival wcw, and managed, after numerous nefarious twists and turns, to land himself a 20-year deal.

‘What emerged was a battle between the u.s. and Canada, with Bret representing a Canadian nationalist, anti-American,’ says Jay.

The $750,000 film, a coproduction with the nfb, has played the festival circuit worldwide and recently won best of festival at Hot Docs! in Toronto.

The first broadcasters on board were tvontario and A-Channel, followed by the bbc, a&e, and France’s Arte. The doc has also been sold to broadcasters in Denmark, Finland and Austria.

Meantime, the producers plan to turn Hitman Hart into a dramatic feature and are negotiating with a major American studio.

High Road is now in development on a pilot for Turner tnt about wrongful convictions. ‘We will investigate the cases of those in jail that may be innocent. We’ll reinvestigate the cases and see if they should be reopened,’ says Jay, who adds that all the subjects will be American.

Another High Road project, now in prepro, is The Blues Brothers Take Las Vegas, the story of two Blues Brothers impersonators from Toronto who play, yup, Vegas. A deal with a u.s. network is in the works.

The busy Toronto prodco is also working on a few other docs including: Through Thick and Thin (on eating disorders) for CBC Newsworld; Opening the Books on the Cold War, which Jay calls ‘an insider’s look at western intelligence agencies in today’s political crisis’; and, Machine Gun, a three-part series about the weapon’s social history, for Discovery u.s., which is in its final stages of production.

High Road also holds an option to develop a feature based on Phillip Hoare’s book Oscar Wilde’s Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy & The Most Outrageous Trial of the Century.

And finally, the company’s current affairs talk show, CounterSpin, has just been renewed by CBC Newsworld for four (half-hour) nights a week.

David Ostriker is the executive producer on all High Road productions.