Shaftesbury Films is bringing Mordecai Richler’s Jacob Two Two Versus The Hooded Fang to the big screen as a live-action musical budgeted at over $5 million.

The Toronto company is partnering with Halifax’s Salter Street Films on the feature film version of the classic kids’ tale set in a shadowy, fantasy world.

Shaftesbury’s Christina Jennings says she is waiting on one final financing partner to greenlight the project. Hallmark has picked up foreign rights, Cineplex Odeon holds Canada and Showtime has inked a presale deal. Shaw’s Children’s Programming Initiative has also been tapped.

Randy Quaid is interested in playing the Hooded Fang, says Jennings, and Eugene Levy and Leslie Nielsen have also expressed interest in roles. Once the final financing comes through and the shoot date is locked, Jennings will be able to confirm availability of the actors and firm up casting.

Prepro is tentatively skedded to begin mid-February for a six-week shoot beginning late March.

George Bloomfield (Due South, Emily of New Moon) will direct and John Gajdecki Visual Effects will provide the f/x to bring the dark, fantasy world of the Fang to life.

Casting calls are underway to find the young boy who will play Jacob.

Toronto screenwriter Tim Burns, who penned Hollywood Pictures’ An American Werewolf in Paris and shared writing credit on 20th Century Fox’s Freaked, adapted the Richler novel.

Burns is also shopping a script for Dick Future: Future Dick, which he cowrote with Tom Stern, a screenwriting partner on American Werewolf and Freaked. It’s the comic tale of a down-and-out detective in the 21st century, ‘a Bladerunner where the computer’s don’t work,’ says Burns.

*Indelible’s first feature

Liam Kiernan of Indelible Moving Pictures has written and published his first novel Northwest Terrorstories, and produced a half-hour comedy pilot A Little Off The Top. Now he’s aiming to begin production in March on his first feature Coffee.

In the romantic comedy, written by Kiernan, chaos ensues when a blight destroys the world’s coffee crops. As prices for the remaining coffee stocks soar to phenomenal figures, a couple lost in a rain forest in Venezuela discover a field of coffee plants immune to the fungus. The lure of potential riches and a desperate attempt to find their way out of the jungle takes its toll on the couple’s relationship.

Budgeted at $3 million, Kiernan says the project is at the ‘just add water and stir stage,’ and he aims to go before the camera in March. A longtime locations manager, Kiernan says he is used to knocking on doors asking to borrow people’s homes and offices, so he thinks he can wheedle financing out of private investors. He’s also shopping potential distributors and coproducing partners.

Kiernan also has an action/suspense thriller called Blizzard Kin on the back burner. The script is based on his book Northwest Terrorstories and follows an Ottawa lawyer, born of a white mother and an Inuit father who comes from a line of legendary shaman. The lawyer returns to his roots in the Arctic to rectify his relationship with his aging father and face up to the calling of his bloodline to assume his inheritance as a shaman.

Kiernan is aiming for a high-budget ($10 million) production for the year 2000.

The half-hour A Little Off The Top, written, directed and produced by Kiernan, is a comedy starring the music group Corky and the Juice Pigs. Talks are underway with The Comedy Network re a potential sale and Festival Cinemas plans to screen the film in early ’98 at one of its rep theaters.

*Small-town producers thinking big

Rigtown Pictures is quite a novelty in the Sarnia-Lambton area, far from the film production hotbed of Toronto. But partners Mark McNabb and Allan Randall say that with the support of a number of Toronto service companies they are off to a good start.

After producing numerous works on video from their base in Petrolia, Ont., the partners formed alliances with Toronto-based companies Complete Film, Kodak and Medallion pfa, which cut numerous deals to help them make a ‘getting-your-feet-wet’ film – the 35mm feature-length psychological thriller feature The Company.

In the Hitchcock tradition, the film, written and directed by McNabb, follows a chemical engineer who awakens from a blackout to find out he has lost his job for mysterious reasons and sets out to piece together what has happened.

A final cut should be ready this spring when the partners will make the rounds of potential distributors.

Sarnia, Ont-based production company Outback Pictures recently contracted RigTown to produce a musical-comedy titled Good Bye, Burlesque. The feature is set in the ’50s and depicts the lives of three dancers in a burlesque house who are being pressured by their manager to turn their art form into mere strip shows.

Post has just wrapped and distribution opps are being hunted. Cherilee Taylor (Blues Brothers 2000) is among the leading cast. Budget is under $500,000.

RigTown and Outback are now codeveloping a one-hour series pilot, The Midnight Club, centering on a group of girls who sneak out at night to tell horror stories. The budget is roughly $300,000 and 30% of the financing has been picked up from private investors. No broadcaster attached as yet.

Meanwhile, RigTown is now in prepro on The Old Sketch, a $150,000 to $200,000 Victorian love story to be shot next summer. Cowritten by McNabb and Herman Gooden, The Old Sketch centers on a father who tries to suppress his daughter’s love of art by sending her off to a boarding school against her will where she contracts a disease and dies. Years later the father’s ghost, tormented by guilt, haunts the family’s former home and the woman who now lives there, while the daughter’s spirit enters an artist living across the street. The ghosts use the pair to connect with each other and heal past wounds.

*Upcoming film starts

Labor of Love, a tv movie produced by ABC Pictures for Lifetime Cable, shoots Jan 12 to Feb. 4. Ray Sager is producing and Ken Raskoff is exec producer. Karen Arthur is directing from a script by Nina Shengold.

Columbia/TriStar will be in town shooting the nbc tv movie Carolyn McCarthy Story Jan. 21 to Feb. 15. Joe Sargent is directing. Post is back in l.a..

Naked City ii, a tv movie for Showtime, is in production Jan. 26 to Feb. 24. Peter Bogdanovich is directing the Paramount production.

Pushing Tin, the 20th Century Fox feature starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton, shoots Feb. 25 to May 21. Mike Newell directs and Art Linson and Michael Flynn are coproducing. Post is slated for London, Eng.

New Line Cinema is in production on The Corrupter from March 2 to mid-May with director James Foley. Mathew Hart is production manager.