Lacewood bolstering ranks for

new co-production Flash Gordon

Word is Ottawa animation house Lacewood Productions is hiring people for a new series. Flash Gordon is a futuristic fantasy series for kids aged six to 12, with the legendary comic strip character – notorious for his shining undergarments and his electric heroism – at the center of the action.

Gerald Tripp is producing and Norman Leblanc is directing the 26 half-hour episodes, which will be done in traditional 2D cel animation at Lacewood.

Plans are to start the Canada-France coproduction in early April. Astral Communications and Hearst Communications are distributing. Estimates put the production budget at $10.5 million. At press time, broadcasters and the French coproducer had yet to be signed.

Shadow dancing

Rysher Entertainment’s new feature, Me and My Shadow, will shoot in Toronto May 8 to June 26. Producers are expats James Orr and Jim Cruickshank, director is Andy Tennant (seaQuest DSV), who is doing his first feature, and stars are Kirstie Alley, Steve Guttenberg and twins Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen.

The twins play look-alikes who meet at a summer camp and trade places. Alley – as one girl’s guardian – and Guttenberg – as the other girl’s pop – fall in love, natch.

Production manager Steve Wakefield says the camp location has yet to be found. dop is Ken Zunder.

Bailey project

Low-budget American feature Mariette in Ecstasy is set to shoot in town starting April 24 for seven weeks.

It’s the first gig for director and coproducer (with Frank Price of Price Entertainment) John Bailey (China Moon) since he shot Oscar nominee Nobody’s Fool.

Set in 1906 and based on the book by Ron Hansen (who also wrote the screenplay), the story is of a woman in her early twenties who joins a cloister convent (a self-contained, contemplative order of nuns).

Although some cast changes are anticipated, word is Geraldine O’Rawe (Circle of Friends) will star as Mariette, Mary McDonnell as her older sister and Mother Superior of the convent, and Rutger Hauer as a priest.

dop is Paul Sarossy (A Promise of Heaven), production designer is Perri Gorrara, production manager is Deb Lefaive and Nava Levin is line producer. Bailey’s producing partner is Alba Francesca, and MaryKay Powell of RaStar (Ray Stark’s company) is executive producing.

Post-production will be done in Los Angeles. Savoy is the distributor.

Barna-Alper expands

In addition to the drama production news at Barna-Alper Productions reported last issue, the company has revealed some fairly dramatic plans for expansion.

When Tom Perlmutter, former executive director of the Alliance for Children and Television, left his post earlier this month to join the documentary and industrial production house as a senior executive producer, he and Laszlo Barna joined forces to develop new areas of drama and children’s programming and to increase the company’s documentary output.

Perlmutter says plans are to get six documentaries and three kids series into production (in addition to the previously announced drama, The Lady is a Teamster: The Diana Kilmury Story), and he hopes to see the company’s annual revenues triple in the next year.

Although he spent two years with act, Perlmutter has yet to produce children’s programming. The series he is currently developing are half-hour magazine-format shows ‘with an underlying philosophy of using kids’ point of view and kids’ talent to run them,’ he says.

On the documentary slate there are a handful of projects, two of which are in development, one in production and two headed for production by the summer.

Fabrikant, poised to go into production in June, is a look into the life of Valery Fabrikant, the Concordia University engineering professor who shot four of his colleagues in a mad spree a couple of years ago. The one-hour doc for cbc’s Witness series will be directed by John Kramer, with Perlmutter and Barna producing.

Also set for a spring start is Old Boys, a documentary about the network of influence generated by Upper Canada College alumni and based on research supplied by James FitzGerald, author of the book of the same name.

ucc alumnus Avi Lewis (New Music associate producer and son of Stephen) will get his directorial debut with this project. Don McQueen is producing and Barna and Perlmutter are executive producing. Citytv and CBC Newsworld are broadcasters of the one-hour program.

Perlmutter has brought Teachers, the documentary he is producing with director John Walker and the National Film Board, to the company. In production since September, the shoot continues through the school year at a downtown Toronto high school.

The Next Generation is a doc in development for Vision TV, with Angela Gwynn John of Halifax coproducing. The film will look at second-generation North American Buddhists, and plans are to shoot in Montreal, New York, Halifax and Boulder, Colorado.

Also in development is an untitled project about the ndp in Ontario. Perlmutter is working with Gerald Kaplan and the two aim to look at the party’s current reign as well as the larger issue of whether there is room for social democracy in the new world order.

Barna-Alper has three staff producers – Perlmutter, Barna and Howard Bernstein, producer of the series The Body – and there are movements underway for further capitalization in order to bring on more staff producers, says Perlmutter.

Also close at hand, he says, is the establishment of the company’s own releasing arm.

Back to Africa

An Atlantis Films crew has packed its kit bag and headed for the sunny skies of South Africa to shoot an mow for abc set at the Kentucky Derby. Derby is in production through mid-April in Durban and the Mooi River.

Why cross the ocean to shoot Kentucky when it’s practically in your own backyard? Location, weather, and location, says executive producer Anne Marie LaTraverse. Also, Atlantis has some good connections to the place since a two-year shoot for African Skies, which wrapped a year ago.

The story is an innocent romance set among race horses, says an Atlantis publicist.

Jonathan Hackett (Harrison Bergeron) is producing, Bob Clark (A Christmas Story) is directing, and executive producers are LaTraverse and Steve Pinkus.

David Charvet (Baywatch) and Joanne Vannicola (Love and Human Remains) star as the young lovers. dop is Alwyn Kumst and production designer is Jacques Bradette (Forever Knight). Writers are Heather Conkie (Road to Avonlea), Charles Rath and Joseph Pipher.

More from Atlantis: funny-man Howie Mandel will be hanging out at the Toronto cbc studios (ironically, a fortress of gloom due to government budget slashes) from early April until mid-June to shoot his own comedy sketch half-hour series.

The Atlantis/L.T.M.N. Productions series promises to be a cross between Monty Python’s Flying Circus and This Old House. Audiences will be the judge.

Ensemble cast members on the 13-episode weekly series include Deborah Theaker, Tim Bagley and Steven Furst. David Rosen is producing the series for cbc and Showtime.