Toronto: Adam Shankman’s film version of Hairspray, due to hit theaters July 20 via Alliance Atlantis in Canada, adds a cinematic dimension to the popular stage musical. The Toronto-shot movie features extensive dance scenes in which characters in billboard photographs come to life to boogie alongside star John Travolta.

IT may not steamroll traditional platforms overnight as many predicted, but new media is certainly digging its heels into the international market.

The now-notorious YouTube video Bride Has Massive Hair Wig Out may have been a fake, but the ultra-low-budget, Toronto-shot and -produced clip became an international sensation, reaching three million viewers in just two weeks. Canadian content-makers working on traditional platforms can only dream of getting an audience that big.

Stars of Global’s homegrown drama Falcon Beach are meeting fans from across Canada, the U.S. and beyond this winter, all from the comfort of the show’s Virtual Cottage Community, a multi-user environment that has some of the show’s advertising partners thinking about a whole new way of reaching online audiences.

Quebec’s star-crossed lovers came out on top despite heavy competition over the holidays when Roméo et Juliette opened on Dec. 15 to a first-week gross of $481,510, besting the box-office take on French screens of both Charlotte’s Web and The Pursuit of Happyness.

Canadians who’ve been going to American sites such as YouTube to post and view videos online now have the option of going homegrown.

With only one or two exceptions, Canadian films are, as usual, laying low during the hectic and high-powered holiday season, and the few that are in theaters are struggling.

Hollywood blockbusters and Oscar hopefuls flood theaters over the holidays, which makes it a risky time to release smaller, homegrown fare on the big screen – except in Quebec, where taking on the major studios has become a tradition.

Despite recent efforts to bring more American TV to Canadian computer screens, insiders close to the recent online launches of Deal or No Deal, Survivor: Cook Islands and The O.C. note that the emerging broadband platform is still in its infancy and, with no working business models in place, that securing online rights to American fare requires complicated negotiations.

Death of a President – the controversial mock doc from director Gabriel Range – may have bombed in the U.S., but its fictionalized assassination of George W. Bush has fared better in Canada where Maple Pictures distributes.

The distribution landscape in Canada is facing significant changes following last month’s sale of ThinkFilm and moves by Alliance Atlantis to unload its Motion Picture Distribution.

Trailer Park Boys The Movie was still going strong more than two weeks into its theatrical run – and had grossed $3 million-plus at the box office by the end of the Oct. 20 weekend.