Canada’s private broadcasters made surprisingly short work of the Los Angeles screenings when, on May 25, they ended a week of previewing new U.S. pilots and started bargaining for potential primetime hits.

* Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf & Grendel has been picked up by Union Station Media and is set for a six-city U.S. release on June 16.

QuickPlay Media walked away with the top honors at last month’s Canadian New Media Awards – taking the annual fete’s prize for company of the year, beating out Vancouver’s Blast Radius and Calgary’s Elluminate.

As Playback goes to press, the private networks are putting on their annual dog-and-pony shows, trotting out stars of their programs and trumpeting the new series they picked up at the recent L.A. screenings. The occasion, of course, is upfronts season, and, as always, this year contains its share of subplots, the main focus again being the CTV-Global rivalry.

The Writers Guild of Canada says it did not concede on fees in order to get the CFTPA and the APFTQ to negotiate on a single contract, as reported in the May 29 story ‘Negotiations with B.C. actors going to mediation.’ The WGC was not contacted for the story.

Fetching Cody

The strong performances of summer movies X-Men: The Last Stand and The Break-Up seem to bear out Playback’s latest poll results. Asked online, ‘How will the movie box office fare this summer?’ 43% of respondents believed that better films would mean better business. But 32% predict that more media choices will lure audiences away, while 25% think this year’s receipts will be on par with last year’s slump.

Blatt comes to Life

Project coordinator Heidi Holm (of Technicolor Creative Services Toronto), crew member Georgina Lopez and production manager Redd Knight hold up their Payback Awards at the Canadian Film Centre’s 2006 Short Dramatic Film Premiere at Toronto’s Varsity Cinemas on June 5. The Payback Awards, sponsored by Playback, recognize industry volunteers who made outstanding contributions to the CFC’s latest round of five shorts.

Small-title distribution and exhibition in Toronto took a blow last month with news that four of the city’s oldest, most established rep cinemas are shutting down – pushed out of business by shrinking DVD windows and mounting competition from first-run mega-chains.

News of the Festival closures comes shortly after Mongrel Media boss Hussein Amarshi and director Atom Egoyan took a step back from Camera, passing day-to-day management of their west-end bar/screening room to gallery owner and next-door neighbor Stephen Bulger.

Larry Kent has run afoul of censors again as his latest film, The Hamster Cage, has been shut out of the Shanghai International Film Festival following a screening by Chinese officials.