CanWest Global’s Canadian television group had a close to 15% increase in operating profit, moving from $191 million last year to $220 million this year, but according to CFO John Maguire, bottom-line figures for fiscal 2003 are lower than overall strong operating results would suggest.

The Canadian Television Fund announced almost $14 million in funding to documentary and children’s programming from its Licence Fee Program fall envelope on Nov. 14, but requests exceeded available funds by more than $10 million.

The latest release from Canuck distributor ThinkFilm has brought in $300,000 at the Canadian box office since opening Oct. 24, not a bad showing considering the film is a three-hour-long version of a story many people have already heard a thousand times.

Getting Canadian audiences into the theaters to see homegrown films is hard enough at the best of times, but asking them to choose a Canadian doc or drama over Hollywood horror-spoof Scary Movie 3, starring the big-budget bust of Pamela Anderson, on Halloween is a stretch.

VIisionTV announced the winners of its first Cultural Diversity Drama Competition on Oct. 22 at a celebration of the multifaith network’s 15th anniversary. Three Canadian production teams were awarded $100,000 to develop and produce one-hour dramas.

YTV has emerged as the top specialty channel in Canada since launching its fall schedule, and it’s not just kids that are tuning in.

What started in 1999 as a conversation between a Canadian and an Italian producer over dinner in Milan, has grown into one of the largest films Alberta has ever seen, complete with major international investment and high-profile stars, including Andy Garcia and Angela Bassett.
Calgary producer Bruce Harvey of Illusions Entertainment is in the final stages of production on The Lazarus Child, a $32-million dramatic feature directed by Graham Theakston (The Politician’s Wife).

Fever Films North America launched in early March with executive producers/producers Danielle Schwartz and Jon Banack. The new commercial prodco is an affiliate of Avion Films and will take over where Generator Films, which is moving away from spot production, left off.
As the name suggests, one of the company’s mandates will be to target work in the U.S. market, something Schwartz says will be an advantage for the homegrown directors on Fever’s roster.

After 12 years, director Richard D’Alessio has left Imported Artists to join director Pete Henderson and executive producer David Cranor as a partner at new Toronto prodco Brown Entertainment, which launched in February.
D’Alessio says the move is an opportunity to help build a shop that will focus on a distinctly Canadian sense of humor and he hopes it will fill a previously vacant niche in the Canadian industry by fixing on a specific comedy identity.

Stealing Time Editing is gearing up for expansion and a major surge in work volume after the relatively small Toronto post house was selected by Young & Rubicam over some of the city’s larger post facilities to be the primary post-production supplier on creative produced for the agency’s client Priszm Brandz.

Constructiong four-foot-tall heads that nod, making it snow in the summer and storm on sunny days, or building an animatronics cow only to drop it on a car may seem unlikely pursuits in an increasingly CG world, but physical and mechanical F/X house, The FX Guys, is staking its claim in Vancouver’s once again busy special effects market and is looking to build bridges between old and new.

The Toronto International Film Festival Group brings more than world premieres, big-name directors and beautiful stars to the city of Toronto; it also brings in the mighty, albeit Canadian, dollar.