OMNI Television has launched a new fund called the British Columbia and Manitoba Independent Producers’ Initiative to benefit independent producers of religious or faith-based documentary programs in the provinces.

Valerie Creighton, outgoing CEO of SaskFilm, is the new president of the Canadian Television Fund ­- filling the void left by Sandra Macdonald just as the fund prepares to join together with Telefilm as a one-board, one-administration organization for Canadian TV projects.

Quebecers turned out to see Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm’s hockey biopic Maurice Richard, which had a big if not spectacular opening weekend in Quebec on Nov. 25.

CBC’s broadcast of what is being hailed as one of the most exciting Grey Cup championship games in CFL history brought in nearly 3.2 million viewers, according to the broadcaster. This is a huge number by CBC’s post-lockout standards, but the ratings for the game – which saw the Edmonton Eskimos defeat the Montreal Alouettes in overtime 38 to 35 – dipped from last year, when the Toronto Argonauts defeated the B.C. Lions before an average of four million viewers.

Film producers and distributors have returned home from a busy American Film Market, which saw Quebec feature C.R.A.Z.Y. win a major award and possible boost in its efforts to secure a U.S. distributor, and sales of a few Canadian-handled thriller/horror films, with other deals pending.

For the first time in a long time, the predominant language in the highest-grossing indigenous film is not French. It isn’t English either.
Water, by Toronto director Deepa Mehta, struck a chord at the Canadian box office, bringing in nearly $221,000 in just 11 theaters after its Nov. 4 release in Toronto and Vancouver, averaging a whopping $20,000 per theater. The Hindi-language film, about impoverished widows in 1930s India, brought in another $302,900 over the Nov. 11 weekend, when it expanded to 41 theaters across the country, for a cumulative of $504,400 by Nov. 14, according to distributor Mongrel Media.

CBC scored decent numbers with its MOW biopics on Shania Twain and Walter Gretzky and with the return of Rick Mercer, perhaps signaling a turnaround in its post-lockout ratings.

All eyes in Quebec are on Maurice Richard, because there is nowhere else to look. According to Patrick Roy, SVP at distrib Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm, the biopic about the legendary Montreal hockey star has received the biggest marketing campaign of any locally produced film in the history of the province. Vivafilm has invested $1.5 million in Richard’s P&A and saturated Quebec with TV, radio, transit, outdoor, print and other advertising. In comparison, it pumped $800,000 into its recent documentary hit Les Voleurs d’enfance.

Halifax: The infamous October Crisis will be revisited in a CBC limited drama series by Barna-Alper Productions and Big Motion Pictures. But executive producer/cowriter Wayne Grigsby says October 1970 will go much deeper than just the one month when ‘terrorism’ and ‘war-torn’ were synonymous with Montreal.
The 8 x 60 series begins on Oct. 5, 1970 – the day British diplomat James Cross was kidnapped from his Montreal home – through the murder of Quebec minister of labor Pierre Laporte, the War Measures Act, the manhunt for Front de Libération du Québec members Paul and Jacques Rose, and their arrests in December.

CBC may be drumming up big ratings with Hockey Night in Canada, but post-lockout viewers are slower to return to the net’s big-ticket dramas, with its two-part prequel mini Trudeau II: Maverick in the Making receiving just a quarter of the ratings garnered by its 2002 predecessor.

After two weeks in limited release in the U.S., Atom Egoyan’s thriller Where the Truth Lies widened to 38 theaters on Oct. 28, but still failed to attract American audiences, and interest in the flick is also dissipating in Canada.

Torrential rain may have washed away the MTV booth, but not the spirits of Canadian producers and broadcasters who, by most accounts, did brisk business at last month’s MIPCOM in Cannes, France.