The government of Ontario has been given another four months to bring its theater laws in line with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, dodging an April 30 deadline laid down last year by the province’s Superior Court of Justice.

CanWest Media Sales’ extreme makeover

Telefilm Canada is circulating a draft proposal addressing the governance and administration of Canadian TV funding that it hopes will be adopted in the coming weeks by the Department of Canadian Heritage.

The new Canadian Television Fund rules regarding documentaries exhibit little or no understanding of the world of independent documentary filmmakers in Canada today. We have become slaves of big corporations who use us to make films for little or no money, and who only commission films that they in their infinite wisdom deem ‘commercial.’

Six-figure shoot in Calgary

Vancouver: At press time, Stargate SG-1 was in production with its seventh episode of its ninth season – yet another season of 22 one-hours ordered by Sci Fi Channel that keeps the successful franchise alive. For those of you counting, that’s at least two more seasons than most observers and many insiders gave the series.

Who’s your Santa?

Toronto: Two years after exiting their Starhunter series, producers Daniel D’Or and Philip Jackson have put together a deal for a new show by invoking a little-used provision of the Canada/U.K. copro treaty, and are in prep to shoot season one of Ice Planet as a ‘twinned coproduction’ between their Toronto-based SpaceWorks Entertainment and Highgate Films in London.
The series, about the marooned crew of a spaceship, will shoot on similar sets in Canada and the U.K., starting this summer in Toronto on a budget of $32.5 million.

Montreal: Producers Josée Mauffette and Jean Bureau have just wrapped on Montreal-based prodco Incendo Productions’ fifteenth MOW. The four-year-old company (formerly JB Media) – owned by Bureau and Stephen Greenberg – is gearing up for a busy production year with four additional MOWs in the works, as well as a one-hour action series, the company’s first international coproduction.

Canada Russia 1972 wraps in New Brunswick

From Dying to dementia

The overall health of Canadian film and TV production last year was perhaps even worse than expected, with the feature film and drama series formats taking particularly hard hits. The silver lining is that TV movies, docs and live-action children’s programming showed signs of growth, and as media giants fade from the production scene, several mid-sized prodcos seem to be taking advantage.