Cheikes’ Monarch Entertainment is out to be king in Vancouver

Vancouver: stephen Cheikes, who left Vancouver-based film investment company The Beacon Group last year to form Monarch Entertainment Corporation, appears to be attracting the big bucks to b.c. and giving his former employer a run for its money.

Monarch, jointly owned by Cheikes’ production company The Storyteller Group and Vancouver-based merchant banker/venture capital company Nova Bancorp, was created solely to attract Canadian investors to invest in foreign, non-Canadian-content productions being shot in Canada.

Birdland, a tv series produced by Columbia Pictures Television and currently shooting in Vancouver, was the first production to take advantage of Monarch’s investment program.

Cheikes claims that Monarch brought more than $25 million worth of production into the province in the last three months of ’93, and next year anticipates over $150 million worth of production in the first six months alone. Among the other companies in discussion with Monarch are Morgan Creek Productions and Paramount Pictures.

Cheikes says Monarch has been particularly successful because it is the first Canadian company to offer investment dollars to American producers coming to shoot their productions in Vancouver. ‘That’s important,’ he says, ‘because besides increasing the number of productions coming to shoot in Canada, with this investment we then have influence with these producers to expand their production expenditures in Vancouver.’

Monarch’s next big challenge, says Cheikes, is to secure an advance tax ruling for the investments from Revenue Canada as Beacon did for one of its funds last year. However, Cheikes says Revenue Canada has been less than enthusiastic about the program because of a strong lobby of producers in Eastern Canada that contends this type of program detracts from the investment dollars available for Canadian-content films. Cheikes argues that the majority of production in b.c. is based on servicing American productions which provides consistent and stable employment for a great number of skilled workers.

Production up

the B.C. Film Commission reports production in b.c. hit the 73 mark last month. That’s an increase of 10 productions over last year’s figures.

With so much production in town, studio space is at a premium. North Shore Studios is booked into mid-January and Disney has put a lock on The Bridge facilities until June ’94 in anticipation of its big-budget remake of the Jules Verne classic, Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Pacific Motion Pictures, which produced 12 of the 73 productions, is also in an expansion mode. Rumor has it Tony Allard, who recently resigned as executive vice-president of Westcom Entertainment, will be joining pmp as ceo.

While pmp president Matthew O’Connor would not confirm the exact nature of Allard’s new association with the company, he did concede they are in discussions with Allard. Allard is currently out of the country and could not be reached for comment.

‘We are in agreement that we have a desire to expand upon our working relationship, but in what form has not yet been determined,’ says O’Connor.

As for rumors that former union business agent and lawyer Allan Krasnick is joining pmp as new head of business affairs, O’Connor says nope. ‘Krasnick is just working closely with us on a number of different issues including labor and government relations,’ says O’Connor. ‘However,’ he adds, ‘hiring an in-house lawyer and business affairs person may still be a distinct possibility in the not too distant future.’

Sassen’s Gateway to B.C.

steve Sassen, vice-president and general manager of Cannell Films, has formed a new Vancouver production company, Gateway Pictures.

Gateway will be an autonomous Canadian division that will operate under the Cannell umbrella to provide production services to outside producers.

Says Sassen: ‘It’s intended (as an alternative) for those producers who fall through the pmp (Pacific Motion Pictures) crack to have somewhere else to go, because (pmp) can’t service all the producers who would like to come up here.’

NFB’s new Pacific head

svend-Erik Eriksen has been appointed new head of the National Film Board’s Pacific Centre following Don Haig’s resignation and move to Montreal earlier this fall.

Eriksen, a longtime nfb staffer, began working with the film board in the early ’70s shooting animation. He’s currently producing several animated films including Raven Steals The Light, based on a Haida legend, and Good Things Can Still Happen, targeted at sexually abused teenagers.

Giddy up, Richard

producer Richard Davis is completing post-production on Tokyo Cowboy, a feature film shot this fall which has been yo-yoing back and forth between that title and the title Yin Yang. And this month he begins production in Edmonton on the low-budget action feature Sleepless, coproduced by Bruce Harvey of Calgary and actor Michael Ironside, who also stars in the film.

After working on this film, the whole crew ought to be sleepless. The story focuses on a female cop who is gang raped by her fellow police officers in training and then proceeds to kill off each of her attackers one by one while sleepwalking. Besides Ironside, the film also stars Craig T. Nelson of tv series Coach fame, Brook Adams and Saul Rubinek.

Dove flies north

and for those of us who’d prefer to see a whole lot less violence on the screen, producer Jana Ververka (Bordertown) is busy scouting locations in the interior of b.c. for the production of the Lonesome Dove syndicated tv series with l.a.-based R.H.I. Entertainment.