It’s almost unheard-of in series television: gather young, unknown, up-and-coming writers and directors and put them at the helm of a show airing on a major TV network.

The spotlight will be on stunt performers, doubles, riggers and coordinators when Omni Film Productions’ half-hour doc series Stuntdawgs takes to the air in January.

Montreal: If organizers of the New Montreal FilmFest were licking their wounds after their bumpy inaugural edition, Serge Losique was probably savoring the scent of blood.
Losique, after all, had recently suffered setbacks at his own World Film Festival, which ran Aug. 26 to Sept. 5 amid his now-famous war with NMFF, low turnout and, again, bad press.

With eyes toward the future, this year’s MIPCOM will have a special focus on the licensing and merchandising of mobile content. The annual TV market, running Oct. 17-21 in Cannes, France, will also feature its expected amount of wheeling and dealing.
While CHUM Television’s SVP of content Roma Khanna will be looking for edgy, genre-specific shows for her channels, she says she has huge expectations for a breakout year in mobile content, something the market has flirted with in the last couple of years.

U.S. software maker Autodesk has signed a US$182-million deal to acquire Alias, bringing the Toronto-based maker of Maya 3D animation and FX software under its wing just 18 months after Alias broke away from its former parent, Silicon Graphics.

A 50-day employee lockout at CBC is ending with what is widely seen as a resounding victory for the public broadcaster’s unionized workforce.
Around 5,500 members of the Canadian Media Guild were to begin voting on Oct. 6, after Playback went to press, on a new deal that includes a 12.6% wage increase over the life of a new collective agreement to March 31, 2009.
The deal was expected to be ratified by employees on Oct. 9.

The federal government’s five-year, half-billion-dollar effort to boost the standing of Canadian movies has met with mixed results, according to a recently released independent study.

Canadians are getting their MTV, again, and likely another regulatory showdown over whether MuchMusic should remain protected against its popular U.S. counterpart.

Montreal: When programming for the 34th Festival du Nouveau Cinéma was unveiled at a press conference on Sept. 27, a group of worn-out journalists looked on. This is, after all, the city’s third film festival in the fall season and, after the rather bruising inaugural edition of the New Montreal FilmFest, the last thing film critics here were eager for was yet another film festival.

Montreal: The good news keeps getting better for the filmmakers behind C.R.A.Z.Y.

David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence brought in a hearty US$8.2 million at the North American box office over the weekend of Sept. 30 – building on an already remarkable debut in limited release a week earlier, when the thriller brought in $230,000 at six theaters in Canada, for a per-theater average of $37,625.

The Hot Sheet tracks Canadian box-office results for the period Sept. 23-29 and television ratings for the period Sept. 26 to Oct. 2.