For the third consecutive year, CTV’s Canadian Idol drew a season average of more than two million viewers for its 34-episode run. Big, but down slightly from last year’s season average of 2.2 million.

Halifax: Gregor Ash is the first to admit there was a lot of pressure on him and his staff to deliver something special for the 25th anniversary of the Atlantic Film Festival. But despite its tug-of-war for dates with the first New Montreal FilmFest, the outcome of this year’s event is sunny, even if the leftovers of Hurricane Ophelia drenched delegates and reporters on its opening weekend.
‘There are huge expectations,’ said the AFF executive director on day three of the 10-day festival. ‘We made quite known that this is the year for us. The other festival put a lot of pressure on us.’

While Hollywood licks its wounds, Quebec is celebrating a record-breaking summer for indigenous films.

Vancouver: Alice, I Think, a new 13 x 30 comedy series for CTV and The Comedy Network, is underway in Vancouver, with local girl Carly McKillip in the leading role.
An Ontario/B.C. coproduction between Slanted Wheel Entertainment and Omni Film Productions, Alice is about a teenaged outsider and her kooky family in Smithers, BC.

Nova Scotia-based exhibitor Empire Theatres has acquired 27 movie houses from Cineplex Galaxy for $83 million, expanding its reach in Canada to 59 cinemas and more than 400 screens. Empire’s new theater locations consist of 13 in Ontario, five in British Columbia, seven in Alberta, and one each for Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Empire’s locations in Ontario include London, Kitchener, Burlington, Hamilton, Kingston and Ottawa.

While Aurore, L’Horloge biologique and C.R.A.Z.Y. continue to draw at the Quebec box office, La Neuvaine has quietly slipped into the Canadian top five, drawing some big numbers for a small release.

Global Television introduced audiences to its fall fare a little early this year, premiering Shaftesbury Films’ ReGenesis and Fox’s Prison Break on Aug. 29.

VisionTV has been growing its audience steadily since about 2001 – the year COO Mark Prasuhn and head of programming Chris Johnson came aboard – and hopes are high that more lifestyle and light entertainment programming in its 2005/06 fall season will provide a further boost.

Halifax: When The Halifax Film Company head Michael Donovan looked into acquiring the rights to make Shake Hands with the Devil into a feature, he was surprised to learn that Laszlo Barna was doing the same thing.
Donovan contacted the head of Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions, and the two producers promised that whoever secured the rights to retired lieutenant-general Roméo Dallaire’s story would invite the other into the production. HFC got there first.

The Atlantic Film Festival usually doesn’t need much of an excuse for a party, so the mind races to think what might happen as the AFF celebrates its silver anniversary, Sept. 15-24.

As the Atlantic Film Festival reflects on the past to note its achievements and staying power during its silver anniversary edition, its international coproduction conference sidekick, Strategic Partners, returns to its roots as well, welcoming delegates from Germany to the conference, as it did during its first event eight years ago.

When the Atlantic Film Festival started up in 1981, it was a simple affair held in St. John’s, NF. By design, it was a place where regional filmmakers could show their work. As it would in the years to follow, it screened everything and anything Atlantic-Canadian, from television commercials to features.