Sharing in the production funding pain, documentary makers saw the largesse of the Canadian Television Fund’s Licence Fee Program dwindle 25% to $16.5 million in the spring round announced May 27.

In the career trajectory of Canadian screenwriter Karen Walton, historic dates might be listed as ‘BB’ or ‘AB’ – as in life before the 1992 Banff Television Festival and the whole ‘life as writer to watch’ period after.

Vancouver: For a handful of Vancouver-based producers, there is a yin and yang to their business plans – or perhaps, more specifically, a yen and Yank.

Vancouver: It’s getting more expensive to attend National Lampoon’s Family Reunion. With the Canadian loonie flying high, the cost of currency exchange for the U.S. production gearing up in Vancouver is starting to mount for West Coast service producer James Shavick.
‘It’s a problem,’ says Shavick of the improving Canadian dollar. ‘Preproduction has started and the costs are containable. But you have to have a jaundiced eye toward the budget and make changes. Kodak isn’t about to lower its prices and the actors aren’t working for less. That means we have to beat up our suppliers.’

Vancouver: Fans of The West Wing may lament the change of creative management at the hit White House series with the departure of creator Aaron Sorkin next season. But no similar quality-control hand-wringing needs to happen for fans of CBC’s Da Vinci’s Inquest after creator Chris Haddock’s landmark deal to produce The Handler for CBS next fall.

Vancouver: While its creative and business management is in Los Angeles and Eastern Canada, Lions Gate Entertainment remains a Vancouver-based company, even with the retirement of its Vancouver-based chairman and founder Frank Giustra.

Vancouver: It was B.C. producer Trish Dolman’s Leo weekend May 9 and 10 with her productions taking 12 trophies at Vancouver’s 2003 Leo Awards, a fifth-annual event created to recognize the film and television production work of B.C. residents.

Vancouver: B.C. film and television crews worked on all or part of 205 productions in 2002, according to official statistics published by B.C.’s Ministry of Competition, Science and Enterprise May 15. That represents an increase of 4% in overall titles in B.C., but direct spending was $993.6 million, the first time B.C.’s annual production revenues have dropped below $1 billion since 1999, as Playback reported in its May 12 issue.

Vancouver: With its boffo box office, mutant thriller X2: X-Men United has blown away that niggling West Coast production doubt that you can make a cheap feature in Vancouver, but not one that makes bundles of money.
On May 13, North American box office for 20th Century Fox’s X2 was US$153 million after opening May 2. That doesn’t include the rest of the world, either. Its opening weekend worldwide was more than US$155 million.

Fireworks Entertainment chief Jay Firestone is stepping aside and veteran television executive Gerry Noble has moved from broadcaster to supplier, replacing the departing production head.

Vancouver: In 2002, direct spending by domestic and foreign film and television producers in British Columbia dropped below the magic $1-billion mark for the first time since piercing the threshold in 1999.

It is only intermission in the debate on liberalized foreign ownership restrictions for telecommunications companies being waged by two federal ministries, say independent producers, whose fate hangs in the balance.