Toronto: A cow from San Diego is getting his own series on CBC thanks to producers in Vancouver and animators in Ottawa.
Chilco Productions and Mercury Filmworks have partnered to turn out a 52 x 11 run of Wilbur for the Ceeb’s kids programming block – putting the pro-literacy bovine on the little screen for two- to four-year-olds by spring. It will also run in the Ready Set Learn! block on Discovery Kids.

Rowan comes home for Eight Days

Dog starts Fire

Hamilton, ON: A veteran of feathered-foe movies is shooting a new MOW, Kaw, about birds run amuck. Rod Taylor, remembered for his roles in The Time Machine (1960) and Alfred Hitchcock’s classic The Birds (1963), plays a rural doctor who begins to understand why the birds surrounding his town are suddenly wreaking havoc and killing people.

Rampage’s Foursome tees off

Perrier, Powers get crackin’

* David Cronenberg is on board as executive producer for the adaptation of his 1988 thriller Dead Ringers into a series for HBO, and is attached to direct a pilot written by Wesley Strick (Cape Fear).

Few executives have commanded a position of power on par with Cineplex Entertainment president and CEO Ellis Jacob, Playback’s 2005 Person of the Year. His company’s surprising $500-million midsummer acquisition of its larger rival, the Viacom-owned Famous Players, has vaulted the Onex-owned exhibition house into rarefied territory.

August 2004: Cineplex Galaxy president and CEO Ellis Jacob gets wind of the potential sale of Viacom’s Famous Players theater assets. He goes down to meet with Viacom in New York as a representative of parent company Onex Corporation. Viacom says it is considering the sale, but requires two things from a potential buyer: ‘Certainty and cash’

*Excerpted primarily from Take One’s Essential Guide to Canadian Film, edited by Wyndham Wise and published by the University of Toronto Press, 2001.

After a staff lockout by management, the CBC is finding that rebuilding worker morale and viewer loyalty is about as difficult as extracting concessions during crunch contract negotiations.

Montreal: Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.