With a pair of well-received films at TIFF this year and a number of announcements out of his new releasing shingle, Robert Lantos has re-established himself as the top buzz-maker on the Canadian film scene.

Of course, Lantos never really went anywhere, but there is no denying that, in recent years, the Alliance Communications cofounder was, commercially speaking, in a rut.

Most of the movies he produced in the past five years had been disappointments. The Atom Egoyan films Ararat (2002), made for $12 million, and Where the Truth Lies (2005), budgeted at $30 million, each took in a worldwide box office of under US$3.5 million, according to Box Office Mojo. (Ararat did, however, take home the best-picture Genie.) Meanwhile, The Statement (2003), which cost $27 million, collected under $1 million in North America. Lantos’ efforts to reach a wider audience had been mostly unsuccessful.

But these films were at least noble efforts. Was it worth the risk of trying to bring the Oscar-nominated artistry of Egoyan to a more mainstream crowd? Absolutely. And The Statement came with a pedigree that made it seem entirely low-risk: legend Norman Jewison helming from a script by Ronald Harwood, with Michael Caine in the lead. Harwood was coming off an Oscar win for The Pianist, while Caine had just been nom’d for The Quiet American.

But as Egoyan himself has said, a film comes together through some form of alchemy, and regardless of intentions, sometimes all the elements gel, and sometimes they don’t. Factor in the timing and promotion involved in a release, and it becomes even more of a black art.

There was, however, a bright spot in this period: 2004’s Being Julia, which brought in more than US$14 million worldwide, thanks chiefly to Annette Bening’s Oscar-nominated performance.

Also frustrating for Lantos was his involvement in distribution. Things went sour at ThinkFilm – in which he had invested nearly 50% after his non-compete clause from the Alliance Atlantis merger had expired – and he and partner Jeff Sackman sold to David Bergstein and Capital Pictures.

But this is all history, and today the head of Serendipity Point Films looks as sharp – and hungry – as ever.

This was apparent just three days into TIFF, which opened with his production of Fugitive Pieces, Jeremy Podeswa’s take on Anne Michaels’ poetic novel about a man trying to shake off the ghosts of the Holocaust. Then, a couple of nights later, David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises – a Lantos copro with the U.K.’s Paul Webster – also received the gala treatment.

Well, it won’t be a surprise to anyone when I say that, of the two, it’s Eastern Promises that will do the super-mega-boffo box office. This excellently crafted thriller about London’s Russian mob scene – with a sequence in which the director offers his own bloody take on the naked fight scene from Borat – shows Cronenberg riding the peak he established with A History of Violence. This is the one we’ve been waiting for – an English-Canadian film that stands to be a smash international hit. (Recall that History was entirely Hollywood-backed.)

Of course, all this comes with some qualifiers. The film was shot in London, has nothing thematically to do with Canada, and has no principal Canadian actors – but this is often the price that must be paid to play on the world stage. And further, Webster (an 80% partner in the venture) was the hands-on producer here. But we’ll take it. For his part in putting the project together – and directors he’s worked with say that nobody else is as good at structuring these kinds of deals – Lantos will enjoy a massive success.

He was far more involved on the 80/20 Canada/Greek copro Fugitive Pieces, which will prove a much trickier sell. Days after its TIFF bow, there were reports of interest from the ever-important U.S. market, but no one is seeing big dollar signs here. It is simply a project its makers believed in, it is a succès d’estime, and most importantly, it takes Podeswa’s game to an entirely new level.

And now Lantos is also steering Maximum Film, his new release company, in a very interesting time on the Canadian distribution front. He has gathered a top-notch team of people he trusts, and will be able to promote his own productions as he sees fit. In fact, he is talking like he is looking to build a vertically integrated empire like in the old Alliance days.

And the plot has only thickened with his compadres Patrice Théroux and Victor Loewy also assuming key new roles at rival companies – Théroux as film distribution head at new player Entertainment One, and Loewy taking over again at Alliance Films, part of the company he launched with Lantos all those years ago.

We are facing a new era of intense competition in the Canadian market – and of synergies as well, as seen in a deal between Maximum and Entertainment One to share titles from Magnolia Pictures and HDNet Films.

Every week seems to bring some new development, and you can bet that, going forward, when the sands of the Canadian film biz shift again, Lantos will be right in the thick of it.