Astral Media’s Harold Greenberg Fund is backing 29 new and ongoing English-language film projects, including five polished scripts whose producers can now chase financing, directors and actors to get before the cameras, likely in summer 2012.

The industry fund, in its latest early-stage film financing round via the script development program, has supported five projects at the polish and packaging stage.

These include the Clement Virgo-directed The Book of Negroes from Conquering Lion Pictures, which now has a script and a long awaited UK coproducer to bump up the film’s budget, and Laurie Lynd’s Truck Stop, from Sixth Avenue Enterprises.

The gritty Truck Stop, based on a script by Canadian Film Centre graduate Bonnie Fairweather, portrays a teenage truck stop prostitute who is sent to foster care in a small, northern Ontario town, only to turn her foster family and classmates upside down.

Also receiving final-stage backing from the Harold Greenberg Fund before heading to pre-production is The Flying Troutmans, by screenwriters Semi Chellas and Miriam Toews.

The industry fund earlier helped Chellas and indie producer Four Seasons Productions option the Miriam Toews novel on which the project is based.

And the fund is getting behind debut feature film writer/director Gia Milani and her project All the Wrong Reasons, which recently won the Script Accessible Award at Slamdance.

Milani will coproduce the film with Tony Whalen, while Phyllis Laing will executive producer.

The theatrical drama already has backing from Telefilm Canada and New Brunswick Film.

All The Wrong Reasons portrays a security guard in a big box store that’s not coping well with severe traumatic stress.

Also getting coin to polish and package is Anthem of a Teenage Prophet, from indie producer Les Films Hand Picked and screenwriter Richard Bell.

The film is based on a novel by Joanne Proulx.

The Harold Greenberg Fund is also backing a number of projects at the first story-optioning stage, including Ava Lee, a book-to-screen adaptation of a Ian Hamilton novel from Strada Films.

Esta Spalding, the creative consultant on Being Erica, Rookie Blue and Flashpoint, is to pen the script for Ava Lee, which follows a young forensic accountant who specializes in recovering massive debts.

Strada Films optioned the Ava Lee novels in June 2011.