Summer series report card

Can’t make an omelet…

Stop before you start, say Playback readers. In a recent online Playback poll asking ‘Should CBC go forward with a Canadian version of cancelled reality show The One?’, 87% of respondents voted No, while 13% voted Yes.

Tom McCamus plays Phil Lancaster, Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire’s military assistant in Rwanda, in the feature Shake Hands with the Devil. The actor’s name was misspelled in the Aug. 7 issue.

Incendo Productions has wrapped its third MOW of the summer and is closing in on a fourth. The busy production house earlier this month finished the thriller Legacy of Fear – with Teri Polo (Meet the Parents) as a detective on the trail of a serial killer – and on Aug. 28 is scheduled to start Abducted, again shooting in Montreal.

Vancouver – Insight Film Studios of Vancouver and Kaleidoscope Entertainment of Toronto are heading into production on the new CHUM sci-fi series Blood Ties. The $22-million season will shoot under the single-purpose banner of Bitten Productions, beginning Aug. 28 in Vancouver.

Toronto – Bernie Zukerman broke with tradition on his latest title, picking up the script for the sports biopic Victor from outside his company, rather than developing one of his own ideas.

Moose Jaw – Regina’s Stephen Onda Productions wrapped the MOW Intimate Stranger for Lifetime Television and Global late last month.

Vancouver – Animation house Mainframe Entertainment is set to team with Hollywood heavyweight The Weinstein Company and comedian Jerry Lewis on an animated update of Lewis’ 1963 comedy The Nutty Professor.

Vancouver – A down-and-out football star contemplates suicide, while an FBI agent tracks a serial killer in the intertwining premises of Under the Sycamore Tree, a feature coproduction between B.C. prodcos Bases Loaded Entertainment and Sycamore Productions, which was set to wrap in Vancouver on Aug. 20.

Toronto – Rhombus Media has walked away from Telefilm Canada with $625,000 to make Inside Hana’s Suitcase, having scored at the pilot program for feature-length docs recently put forth by the federal agency, CBC and the Rogers Group of Funds.

Toronto ­- Cinespace Film Studios in Toronto is hosting the thriller P2 until September – putting up debut director Frank Khalfoun and stars Rachel Nichols (Alias) and Wes Bentley (Weirdsville). The picture by U.S.-based Summit Entertainment has Nichols as a woman trapped in an underground parking lot over Christmas Eve.