Much like the subject of his next project, Pat Ferns will cover a great deal of territory this winter to make Captain Cook, a four-hour mini about the famed explorer set to shoot across Canada, in the U.K., Tahiti, Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia.

Montreal filmmaker Frederic Bohbot structured his documentary Once a Nazi as a mystery – so viewers could make up their own minds about former Concordia professor Adalbert Lallier and his controversial past.

Equinoxe Films and Milagro Films, both based in Montreal, have signed a deal with Zebra Producciones in Spain to copro Secrets, a feature thriller to shoot in Quebec and Spain next year. The script – about a woman’s search for her missing boyfriend – comes from Antonio Saura (Salomé) and will be directed by his brother, Carlos Saura Medrano (Oculto).

* CCI Entertainment in Toronto and Ambience Entertainment in Australia are making a second season (26 x 30) of the cartoon Erky Perky.

CanWest Global Communications, CHUM, CTV and CBC want to charge cable companies a fee for carrying their signals, telling the CRTC – which next month will hold a wide-ranging review of its TV regulations – that they need the added revenue to stay competitive and to pay for the coming conversion to digital TV.

Vancouver reviews film regs

Victor Loewy is back at Motion Picture Distribution, not as chairman of the board, but as a high-paid consultant in charge of little more than the New Line Cinema slate.

Rhombus Media is as stable as ever, according to cofounder Larry Weinstein, who has backpedaled on remarks he made last month to a Toronto newspaper, in which he said his company was coming undone because of creative differences among its top executives.

When Death of a President opens across North America on Oct. 27, Canadian and American audiences will be exposed to decidedly different marketing strategies.

The Hot Sheet tracks Canadian box-office results for the period Sept. 29-Oct. 5, 2006 and DVD sales in Canada for the period Sept. 24-Oct. 2, 2006.

Alliance Atlantis’ Bon Cop, Bad Cop has busted the all-time Canadian box-office record for a domestic film, having hit $11.7-million over the Thanksgiving weekend to beat Porky’s long-held mark, even as another homegrown comedy made some opening weekend history of its own.

Canada’s highest-rated comedy series looks to extend its success into home video with the DVD release of season three on Oct. 3. The three-disc set will be on par with the first two seasons as far as unit volume, says Kerry Kupecz, director of marketing and promotion at Toronto-based Video Services Corporation, which also streets the sophomore year of Gemini comedy series nominee Kenny vs. Spenny on Oct. 24.