St. John’s, NF: Pope Productions is gearing up for two interprovincial coproductions with Toronto-based Shaftesbury Films – a comedy series for Family Channel and a miniseries for CBC – in addition to several other projects due to air in the new year.
Life With Derek, a 13 x 30 comedy series, started shooting Oct. 18 in Corner Brook, NF, with plans to wrap Dec. 1.

The stock footage industry is hot and getting hotter. Just ask Anita Turcotte, visual researcher for Toronto’s high-end doc prodco Cream Productions, where she is responsible for finding the archive elements that make up 30% of footage in the productions she works on. She starts by breaking down the script into archival elements, then begins the needle-in-a-haystack search for the perfect clips among a growing volume of high-quality stock footage.

Could an edgy show with lots of sex and swearing, ample nudity and four really hot women help boost homegrown television? Two of the country’s top producers think so and have come together on a gritty, new HBO-style comedy that has helped repatriate Canada’s newest comedy talents.

Only 68 of the thousands of Canadians who vied for slots on CBC’s new primetime reality series Making the Cut appeared in the show’s two-hour debut, and while the series is not expected to attract the giant NHL audiences CBC may have to do without this year, the pubcaster is pleased with initial response to the new show.

After bringing in more than $3.1 million over its opening week, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, distributed by Alliance Atlantis, continues to gain ground as the highest-grossing Canadian feature of the year, almost doubling its initial take in weeks two and three of its release.

Ivan Reitman’s first visit to Nova Scotia since he immigrated in 1951 and took his first steps on Canadian soil at Halifax’s Pier 21, was certainly the buzz of the 24th Atlantic Film Festival, especially after the veteran Canadian comedy director/producer announced his plans to work on a feature with local heroes the Trailer Park Boys.

Emerging talents were given a chance to shine at Pitch This! 2004 held on Sept. 13 atop the Sutton Place Hotel. This year’s animated pitchers dazzled the audience with drag queens and topless men, not to mention a few monkeys, but it was the polished pitch for Remembrance that earned this year’s cheque for $10,000.

Halifax: Getting meetings with the top international producers, distributors and broadcasters is usually a challenge. But at Strategic Partners 2004, all you have to do is ask.

Cinepost youth series has international aspirations

In today’s film and TV climate, an Alberta producer, a Toronto producer and a Montreal entertainment lawyer may each face very different challenges, but one thing they share is the desire to find the perfect coproduction recipe.

For only the second time this year, an English-Canadian film has grossed more than $1 million at the domestic box office, and it did so after only two weeks in theaters.
As of Sept. 7, CHUM’s teen flick Going the Distance, directed by Mark Griffiths (Hardbodies), had grossed $1.3 million and was playing on 60 screens across the country, for a per-screen average of $3,328, up slightly from its opening weekend average.

Alliance Atlantis Communications’ closure of Halifax-based Salter Street Films didn’t keep Michael Donovan and Charles Bishop down for long. The ex-Salter principals have joined forces again in The Halifax Film Company, which officially launched in May, and according to Donovan, the new production company is emerging in a market of unprecedented opportunity.