Vancouver: A real crime was averted this summer when the sequel to Jinnah On Crime: Pizza 911, a Gemini nominee in the best TV movie or miniseries category, pulled its financing together and will now go into production in November.

Vancouver: A quartet of MOWs based on the stories of Mary Higgins Clark will wrap back-to-back (to-back-to-back) production in Vancouver Dec. 3. Production began Sept. 3.
Produced as an interprovincial coproduction by Saskatoon’s Edge Entertainment and Vancouver’s Waterfront Pictures for PAX TV and CanWest Global (with an array of international presales), the Suspense Theatre anthology, as it’s being called, features $2.8-million adaptations of We’ll Meet Again, He Sees You When You’re Sleeping, Before I Say Goodbye and A Crime of Passion each at $2.8 million.
We’ll Meet Again, with its planned November airdate, just wrapped, with Laura Leighton (Melrose Place), Brandy Ledford (Baywatch) and Anne Openshaw (Narc) in the leads. Done for this Yuletide season, the Christmas-themed He Sees You When You’re Sleeping was just prepping at press time and no cast was signed.

Vancouver: In tax-credit news, the B.C. government will extend a couple of existing rebate programs and will likely introduce a new tax credit in its new fiscal year, still six months away.

Vancouver: For a bunch of people whose business is capturing fact and fantasy for the flickering screen, members of the Motion Picture Production Industry Association of B.C. have no illusions about the challenges of the Vancouver industry over the short and long term.

Vancouver: Thinking big is one of those strangely perilous situations in Canadian production financing: Forget your Canuck roots and the found money from public sources, and Telefilm Canada et al gets a bit cranky. Try to capture a commercial appeal and the high-minded Canadian festivals tend to hold their noses. Fantasizing about conquering the U.S. box office is great and all, but remember, the real goal is showing Canada to Canadians.

Vancouver: The film and television production sector in Vancouver may be valued at $1.1 billion, but the real economic impact comes in the spin-off business to suppliers on the periphery of the hubbub.

Vancouver: Checkbox #24: Expand financial management skills of industry. Checkbox #5: Streamline tax policy administration and application processes. Checkbox #20: Enhance regional bonus on tax polices to promote increased production beyond the Lower Mainland. Checkbox #14: Work with communities to ensure that producers have quick, easy and reliable access to locations. Checkbox #29: Mount PR campaign to foster greater understanding and support of industry regionally, provincially and nationally.

Vancouver: Unlike most every producer in Vancouver these days, Dufferin Gate’s West Coast office is multitasking again, with three pilots for Showtime and a TV movie for Lifetime underway at press time.
Earthlings, starring Jennifer Beals, wrapped Aug. 28. The pilot for Showtime is about the ‘lives and loves’ of a group of Los Angeles lesbians.

Vancouver: After a dismal first six months in which Vancouver’s production volumes were off by 50% and unemployed film workers sang a song of woe, the outlook is somewhat brighter for the remainder of 2002.
‘Nobody is doing back flips,’ cautions John Juliani, president of the Union of BC Performers, with its 3,000 full members. ‘But business is picking up.’

Vancouver: Local crews can count on dogs and murderers to keep the slow summer from being truly beastly.
Air Bud: Buddy Spikes Back is the fifth installment in the family film franchise. In this one, the golden retriever expands his athletic repertoire – which already includes basketball, football, soccer and baseball – to volleyball. He also gets dognapped, and the kids have to save him and the bumbling crooks are foiled and all that, too.

Playback is scouring the Canadian industry for novel approaches to production financing that sidestep the Canadian Television Fund. Plan B will be a semi-regular, ongoing feature that profiles the people, strategies, ideas, conflicts and successes that prove that Canadian production can thrive without government handouts.

Vancouver: Citytv’s launch in Vancouver July 22 may not be giving existing stations static today, but could be a real threat in five to 10 years – especially when it comes to news and local programming, says a local analyst.
Formerly CKVU, Citytv caters to Vancouverites aged 18 to 34, viewers not well served by older-skewing stations BCTV Global, BC-CTV and CBC, says David Stanger of DBA Baron, a media buying and planning company.
‘It takes five years for a newscast to mature and an audience to settle in,’ says Stanger, explaining that a station’s personality is defined by local programming like news. ‘[Citytv Vancouver] captures the under-30 crowd that is looking for something to call their own instead of embracing their parents’ newscast. That’s what they did in Toronto 25 years ago. [Citytv] has the opportunity to become tomorrow’s adult newscast.’