Montreal: A major financing deal with a u.k. distributor has ensured creative control on the 22-hour family adventure series The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne remains with the producers, and not the major u.s. and European broadcasters soon to acquire the show.

The only broadcaster to license the $48-million series to date is in fact cbc and Thomas Howe, senior director international coproductions sales and acquisition, a decision based entirely on the series’ scripts, says Filmline International president and series executive producer Nicolas Clermont.

‘With all the budgetary cuts [at cbc] it’s not easy obtaining full value,’ says Clermont, ‘but the fact that they liked it and came in is still a huge plus, because it will be seen nationwide.

An official Canada/u.k. treaty coproduction between Montreal’s Filmline, a subsidiary of Behaviour Communications, and London’s Talisman Crest, Jules Verne is being produced in two blocks of 11 hours in a digitally integrated 100,000-square-foot studio located in the former Angus Shops complex in Montreal.

‘We had a firm deal on 11 [hours] with an option on the second 11, and now the option has been exercised because the distributors love what they’ve seen. They could have opted out after the first four episodes,’ says Clermont, whose most recent tv production goes back to Highlander: The Series, coproduced with France’s Gaumont.

‘This is one of those real coproductions between two countries where each country brings certain talents to the table. They brought an enormous amount with the concept, stories and actors and we’ll bring the rest – the technical know-how including the special effects,’ he says.

The production features a wealth of gothic and sci-fi inspired digital visual effects and is being taped in Sony high-definition format. Shooting extends 176 days to next spring.

Not preselling Jules Verne to a major broadcaster, either in the u.s. or Europe, has been a conscious decision based on retaining creative control, says Neil Dunn, one of the two Talisman principals (along with Richard Jackson).

While a deal with bbc seems imminent, Dunn (African Journey, Tarzan – The Epic Adventure) says ‘just like the big American and big French broadcasters, and everybody else, they [bbc] like to take control, but we’ve never been prepared to give them control. We wanted to keep it international, because as soon as any one jurisdiction gets ahold of it they turn it into their product and it kills it for the rest of the world.’

Careful balance

Financing the production has been an ongoing battle, says Dunn.

Although the project was initially shopped at the L.A. Screenings, he says the intention was always to work outside the big networks and cable channels to avoid creating a mainly American product.

‘We worked outside that line knowing they were just too big and too tough for us,’ says Dunn. ‘What we wanted to do was to make sure we stayed in touch with them. We sort of dripped them information, but we never gave them the opportunity to actually jump in the project.

‘It was a careful balance between feeding them enough information to get enough reaction from them to be able to go to the rest of the world and say, `These guys [in the u.s.] are really liking it, but you’d better get in now.’

‘It was a case of soliciting acceptance in varying degrees and levels over time, and at the same time nursing financial institutions behind a distribution company,’ continues Dunn, ‘because the classic [understanding] of this industry is that if you give money to producers you never see it again; if you give the money to distribution companies at least you’ve got the product in your hands and the mechanism where the thing gets sold to control the money. So all the financing is structured through distribution.’

Distribution leverage

Jules Verne’s international distributors are Classic Media Distributors, the copyright holder, and their appointed sales agent, Global Programming Network, both of London.

gpn is a joint venture between a u.k. sales outfit and Grey Advertising. cmd’s distribution advance for principal financing is underwritten by Flashpoint, a leading u.k. media financier.

Dunn says the participation of Grey – which owns 50% of gpn and has a 137 worldwide office network – gives the production ‘a big stick’ with which to induce the broadcasters, both through advertising leverage and Grey’s ties to the world’s largest media buyer, Mediacom.

Additional financing comes from a presale to Helkon for German-speaking rights. Helkon recently merged with Netherlands-based Euro tv giant Endemol.

Clermont says financial realities being what they are, ‘it was more favorable for the two [producing groups] that Filmline take over and become the majority partner.’ Directors signed to date include Gabriel Pelletier, Jean-Marc Vallee, Eleanore Lindo and Tom Clegg.

The story

Series creator and exec producer Gavin Scott says he has been fascinated by 19th century French author Jules Verne (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days) since the age of 10.

‘In our 22 hours we place the young, impoverished author at the center of his own adventures,’ says Scott. ‘We say that in his early 20s he meets up with an English gambler called Phileas Fogg who had won an amazing airship in a wager, and that together with Fogg’s valet (Passe-Partout) and Fogg’s cousin (the world’s first female secret agent, Rebecca Fogg), Jules Verne traveled the world and gathered the material which he later turned into his famous science fiction novels.’

While Scott conceived the original story, the storylines were further developed by a group of bbc-approved writers. The scripts were then returned to Talisman’s writing department, headed by Richard Jackson, where they were reworked to ensure continuity and character development.

u.s. actor Chris Demetral (Dream On, Journey of the Heart, For Hope) is the young Jules Verne, u.k. actor Michael Praed (Crown Prosecutor, Robin of Sherwood) is the handsomely cynical Phileas Fogg and fellow u.k. thespian Francesca Hunt (Roughnecks, Strathblair) plays Rebecca Fogg. Montreal comedian Michel Courtemanche is the brave and inventive Passe-Parout.

The story opens in Paris in 1861 but quickly moves about mid-Victorian Europe, with episodic stopovers in Berlin, London and the English countryside, Italy, the southern u.s. during the Civil War, the Himalayas, Africa and beyond terra firma to Atlantis and Captain Nemo and his infamous submarine.

Verne and Fogg’s mission is to foil the sinister League of Darkness, a conspiracy of rich and powerful aristocrats and nobles dating back to the Middle Ages.

The league’s leader and the ultimate enemy is the evil 500-year-old abomination, Count Gregory.

‘For centuries they [the overlords] manipulated history,’ says Scott. ‘Come the 19th century when industrialization was happening, when democracy and education were spreading, they realized their power was threatened. And this [threat] was exemplified in a man who very much believed in the future – Jules Verne.’

Defeated by his Muslim enemies and taken captive to 14th century Constantinople, Gregory was dragged behind wild horses to his death.

Scott says Gregory would have died but for a secret subterranean order of monks who gathered up his severed parts and put him back together again, half-man, half-machine.

‘There was a point in my story where Count Gregory existed in a bell jar. We got him out of the bell jar but he still exists in pieces,’ says Scott.

Inspired by Lucas

Scott says he is inspired by George Lucas, who hired him in 1990 to write and develop Young Indiana Jones, a critically acclaimed but incomplete series produced for abc/Paramount.

‘I regard him in many ways as a mentor, a guiding light,’ he says. ‘Having worked on that series with him I saw his vision and I saw how one makes a vision come true.’

Scott says Montreal was initially chosen for its European-flavored architecture, ‘but when we got here we said, `My God, the artistic talent here is incredible.’ ‘

‘I come up with a look for Count Gregory, and I can’t draw for toffee, and people here like Meinert Hansen [series visual effects supervisor] can turn them into something fabulous. Then [production designer] Normand Sarrazin can actually physically build it.

‘Plus [Montreal’s got] the people with the sheer technical skill as computer experts who can take that stuff and turn it into digits and allow us to do anything with it, because it is inside the computer.

‘All this was here in Montreal as well as the architecture and film skills,’ says Scott.

Michael Mullally (Wirehead, Amazonia), series coproducer with Filmline’s Richard Lalonde, says independent producers are still ahead of the l.a. studios in recognizing the value of partnering and shooting in Canada.

‘The good news is that we don’t have a studio sitting on top of us,’ says Mullally, ‘so creatively we’ve had more free rein than we could have ever imagined. The challenge is maintaining the high level of creative thinking and financial restraint.’

HD cinematography

Jules Verne is being originated on the new Sony HDW-700 high-definition camera,

‘The hd medium is so crisp and beautiful and easy to light,’ says Pierre Gill (Le Coeur de poing, Margeurite Volant), a prominent Montreal film cinematographer who is also the shoot’s second unit director. The other cinematographers are Yves Belanger and Daniel Villeneuve.

One of the interesting technical innovations on the Jules Verne set is the large helium balloons used as diffused/floating lighting sources, effectively reducing the need of cumbersome rigs. Many of the composited scenes in the series are being taped against the studio’s 160-foot green-screen cyclorama.

Voodoo HD

To meet the production’s huge visual effects schedule, Richard Ostiguy, president of Montreal digital studio Voodoo Arts and the producers of Jules Verne have teamed up to create Voodoo HD Studio.

Voodoo’s partners include Sony, Softimage/ds (Digital Studio) and Integraph Computer Systems, the graphics workstation manufacturer. The studio is located inside the Angus Shop facility, with staff at Voodoo hd numbering 30 – 20 artists and 10 technical and management personnel.

The scope of the work at Voodoo hd includes recreating period settings, principally the mid-1860s, locations all over the world, and many hundreds of special visual effects, including flying machines, strange characters, lamp paintings and 3D for all orders of explosions.

The show has roughly 60 effects shots per episode.

U.K. requirements

Dunn says the key requirement for the u.k. market is a solid drama presentation.

‘The u.k. works on drama,’ he says, ‘good-quality drama, strong writing.

‘I think there’s a whole range of quality stuff out there which is drama-oriented which does very well and they [the American networks] say, `Oh well, it’s the exception.’ But the exception is gathering momentum so quickly that I believe the barrier to perception is actually the broadcasters and the acquisition guys, not the audience.’

Based in Santa Monica, Calif., series writer Scott’s impressive filmography includes The Borrowers, adapted by Scott from the classic Mary Norton book; the Joe Dante-helmed Small Soldiers; Brooke and First American, two historical epics penned for Castle Rock; and the animated series Blazing Dragons.

He is also adapting Marion Zimmer Bradley’s bestseller The Mists of Avalon for Turner Television Network, and recently completed the screenplay of the mountaineering saga Touching the Void, developed for actor/producer Tom Cruise.

Dunn, Scott, Clermont, Pierre de Lespinois, Michael Huffington and Richard Jackson are the series’ exec producers. David Forrest is co-exec producer. Coproducers are Filmline’s Lalonde and New York-based Mullally. The Completion Guarantors has bonded the series.

Talisman Crest was formed in the u.k. specifically for Jules Verne, while Talisman has been a major bbc producer for the past six or seven years, supplying drama series such as The Rector’s Wife and Just William.