Montreal: The lights are on at SDA Productions following recent financing developments and as creative and production personnel get ready to run.

Financing on the $2-million, two-hour tv movie Haute Surveillance is confirmed, with six additional hours in development.

Described as a hybrid drama series melange of ‘polar,’ film noir and thriller genres, filming is slated for fall with Christian Duguay (Screamers, The Assignment) on board as creative producer/director. The project is a first in domestic primetime tv series for Duguay.

The concept originates with novelist Benoit Dutrizac (La Conciergerie des Monstres). Mario Bolduc, Genevieve Lefebvre and Marcel Beaulieu are among the writers.

Andre Picard and Myrianne Pavolvic are the exec producers and Marie-Andree Vinet is producing. Radio-Canada is the broadcaster.

As for the balance of financing, beyond the mow the company will have something in hand to leverage whatever lies ahead in ’99.

Jag, a 10-hour primetime drama for src from writer Joanne Arseneau, opens with a brutal street gang murder.

The series chronicles the terrifying reality of multicultural, urban street gangs and organized crime and the social and correctional agencies, parents and community groups determined to resist them.

‘It’s important to stress the series is not only aimed at a youth public,’ says sda vp Francine Allaire. ‘We decided to do this as parents. Everybody here is worried for their children.’ The director is Pierre Houle.

Jag is budgeted at $800,000 an hour, with 16mm filming set for February ’99. Investors include Telefilm Canada, the ctcpf and the tax credits. sodec and the Cogeco Program Development Fund assisted in the development.

Projects in development at sda include the new 13-hour Luc Dionne (Omerta) series Le Bunker, an insider’s take on the people and politics of power; Lucille Teasdale, a four-hour English-track miniseries on the life and work of the late great Canadian doctor; and The Stork Derby, a tv movie with commitments from Jay Switzer of Toronto’s Chum Television and src.

Stork is based on a true story and set in Toronto in the years leading up to the Great Depression when immigrants with large families were present but not necessarily prominent. The movie dramatizes the madness and serious social fallout of a wealthy bachelor’s dying pledge of $1 million to the woman who could produce the most babies in the 10 years following his death.

Allaire says ‘the baby derby’ erupted into a media circus and a sensationalized court trail. The gutsy female journalist who dug into the strange and dark story is given recognition and a role in the production.

Stork is a $3.5-million Quebec/Ontario coproduction with Lifeboat/Sulari of Toronto. Karyn Nolan and director Mario Azzopardi are exec producing with Picard and Allaire. The script is from Nolan and Madeline Thompson and the producer is Stephane Reichel.

According to Allaire, the project received a warm reception in simulation at the Banff Television Festival from Lifetime, Showtime and hbo in the u.s., as well as from the Brits.

Other production at sda – outside the kiddies and tween categories and Georges Mihalka’s big-budget crime drama Omerta iii – includes Dans une galaxie pres de chez vous, a new teen sitcom from producer Diane England for Canal Famille, and Riopelle, a feature doc marking the great painter’s 75th anniversary.

Riopelle is from writer/director Pierre Houle and producer Francine Forest and has been presold to src and Canal D.

Dans une galaxie is pegged as pure deep-space/sci-fi madness, with taping at the Tele-Quebec Studios. Writers are actor Claude Legault and Pierre-Yves Bernard. The elaborate set design is by Jean-Claude Lajeunie.

– La Petite Vie returns

Pubcaster Radio-Canada has early plans to appropriate a huge share of the Quebec tv audience with the September launch of 13 all-new episodes of the comedy ratings smash La Petite Vie. The sitcom is so incredibly popular here reruns from earlier seasons topped all other network shows during the past season.

In transposed programming terms – keener minds have argued the show is untranslatable – La Petite Vie has the same order of excellent cost/quality value as, for instance, a property like The New Red Green Show, but with a difference – a tad less duct tape and an audience 10 times the size.

The format, production company, booming supplier Avanti Cine Video and principal cast are the same as earlier seasons, with series creator and star Claude Meunier in the lead role of the Lincolnesque-lookalike Popa.

One of the basic ‘running gags’ in the new season revolves around the pregnancy of one the dopey daughters. ‘That – the baby’s coming – is sustained throughout the season and at the end of the year the baby is born,’ says Meunier (Peptivi, Ding et Dong, le film).

Meunier says the new season closely resembles the first year, 1993, with the hilarity mainly centered on family personalities – Popa and Moman (played in drag by the other half of the Ding et Dong comedy/movie team, Serge Theriault), Pinson and Creton, Therese and carrot-headed Rejean, the eccentric Caro and dumb rocker Rod – and less on outsiders and invited guests.

Despite the ultra-boffo domestic performance, the show itself is virtually unexplainable, never mind unexportable.

Says Meunier: ‘Scripts have been sold but not [completed] episodes. It’s very difficult. The problem is that it’s tres Quebecois. The other big thing is the look for the Moman and Popa characters – there are people who think it’s two homosexuals. In Quebec, people understand [their appearance] comes from Ding et Dong. [In Europe] people say, `What is it, two gay guys who live together? Why does Popa have that [grotesque] beard?’ ‘

Meunier has an idea for a feature film but says he mainly adores doing television.

‘My writing is very verbal, more tv than cinema. I talk a lot and film is very, very slow – it takes five years – and it’s still a little bit `artisanal’ [folky].’

Meunier and cast scored a healthy raise in remuneration for pulling in 2.6 million viewers weekly, but the teleroman-style show is still a gold mine in production cost terms – a quarter of the budget spent on filmed drama.

La Petite Vie is being taped at Studio LaSalle. Nine episodes are in the can with four to go. Total production as of this fall: a not-quite-ready-for-syndication 59 half-hours.

– Canadian wrap on Attenborough’s Grey Owl

The Canadian portion of filming on Richard Attenborough’s historical biography/drama Grey Owl wrapped this week after two and a half months on location in rural Quebec, Montreal and outside Ottawa.

The film stars Pierce Brosnan as Englishman Archie Belaney, who later became the legendary Grey Owl, a pioneer conservationist in the 1930s.

Producers on the $45-million Canada/u.k. coproduction, believed to be the most expensive Canadian movie ever, are Attenborough (Gandhi, Cry Freedom, Shadowlands), London-based Jake Eberts and Montreal-based Claude Leger.

A spring ’99 release is anticipated by Montreal-based distributor Remstar Releasing.

Additional filming on Grey Owl is planned for Hastings, Eng.