Daniel Roby has commenced principal photography on his new project, Funkytown, for Montreal-based Caramel Films with Bon Cop, Bad Cop‘s Patrick Huard leading an ensemble cast. Written by Mambo Italiano scribe Steve Galluccio, the $7.3 million drama is produced by Caramel’s André Rouleau, executive producer of Denis Villeneuve’s Polytechnique and Ken Scott’s upcoming Les doigts croches, as well as the Don Carmody-backed thriller Die.

Roby is best known for the well-received La peau blanche, which won the best first Canadian feature prize at TIFF in 2004 and was optioned for English-language remake by Barry Levinson’s Baltimore Pictures.

As the name suggests, Funkytown is set in disco-mad Montreal of the mid-1970s, when the city was as well known for its Olympic ambitions as for its libidinous tolerance. In the center of it all was the Limelight Discotheque, which for four years was one of the hottest destinations in the world — enticing such guest artists as Donna Summer and Grace Jones. The film follows the intersecting lives of a cast of high-living Limelighters as they pass each other on the way up and down.

Featured players include Paul Doucet, Sarah Mutch, Justin Chatwin, Raymond Bouchard, Geneviève Brouillette and François Létourneau. The film will be distributed by Remstar and Alliance Vivafilm in summer 2010.

Principal investors are Telefilm Canada and SODEC, with support from The Harold Greenberg Fund, Super Écran as well as provincial and federal tax credits.