Toronto-based veteran producer Peter Williamson has set up his new shingle with the launch of his new production company Pale Gleams Inc.

Williamson (pictured left) has been part of Canada’s screen industry for decades after founding Breakthrough Entertainment with Ira Levy in the 1980s. He departed the company — which was acquired by Toronto’s Shadow Pine Studios in 2022 — in 2018 as part of a management buyout.

Pale Gleams’ initial slate includes The Last Trench, a film adaptation of Canadian author Will R. Bird’s (pictured middle) memoir And We Go On, which recounts his experiences as a soldier in the 42nd Canadian Infantry Battalion during the First World War. Williamson has acquired exclusive movie rights for the adaptation.

The prodco has commissioned John Whitcher (Searching for Vimy’s Lost Soldiers) to write the screenplay with Tim Wolochatiuk (Storming Juno; pictured right) tapped to direct. Williamson will executive produce the film with principal photography slated to begin in fall 2023 in Ontario, according to a news release.

The Last Trench recounts the run-up to the First World War armistice ahead of Corporal Bird and his squad attacking a maze of German trenches after a “ghostly White Lady” predicts the deaths of all but one of Bird’s squad the night before. The film will explore the “psychic effects” the war has on its participants, said the release.

“The horrors of the First World War trenches ended 100 years ago. Yet today, events in Ukraine remind us that war is always with us,” said Williamson in a statement, adding that The Last Trench will be a “unique view” on the war.

Photos courtesy of Roundstone Communications