The Beowulf man

Vancouver: Perhaps Canada’s first foray into edgier U.S. cable-style drama, Terminal City will go into production in Vancouver in September. The Crescent Entertainment project – made in partnership with Vancouver creator Angus Fraser (Big Dog Productions) – deals with the touchy subject of cancer.
In the 10 one-hour limited series, a woman becomes the host of a reality show that chronicles her battle with cancer – a journey that has her dealing with celebrity, family and her own demise.

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Titanic 2D

Ontario producers did not get their wish from Minster of Finance Greg Sorbara, who on May 18 delivered a new provincial budget in Toronto, keeping the hot-button Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit at 20% despite calls for a significant boost.

Despite its success in generating Canadian audiences with shows like Degrassi: The Next Generation, The Eleventh Hour and Corner Gas – some of Canada’s most-watched domestic programs in 2003 – CTV saw its English-language drama allocation drop to 21% in 2004 from an average of 30% over the previous three years in the May 14 funding decisions from the Canadian Television Fund, as directed by Telefilm Canada.

Toronto-based Peace Arch Entertainment Group has signed a three-year, 15-picture output deal with Showtime Networks. The cofinancing and distribution agreement, worth up to $225 million if all the movies are completed by 2007, means Peace Arch will handle theatrical distribution in Canada and internationally, while Showtime will air in the U.S.

The CRTC hopes that by allowing more advertisements on TV it can revive English Canada’s ailing drama scene and has proposed a series of ad time rewards for broadcasters – to boost the airtime, viewership and spends of high-budget, original shows – but has set aside calls for time credits, reduced Part 2 fees and stiffer regulations.

Summertime, and the living is not as easy as it used to be, at least not for execs at CTV and CBC, who this month revealed some of their programming plans for the next three months. Their schedules reflect the increasing competitiveness of the summer season which, no longer a long, hot wasteland of reruns and filler, has this year been crammed with high-draw reality on one side and a smattering of Hollywood and Canadiana on the other.

The closure of Halifax-based Salter Street Films did not slow Michael Donovan and Charles Bishop for long. The two former Salter principals launched a new prodco, The Halifax Film Company, in the city’s Electropolis Studios May 14, five months after parent company Alliance Atlantis Communications closed the doors on one of Halifax’s most productive companies.

Film distribution and exhibition are set to change in Ontario following a court ruling that has stripped the province of its power to ban movies. On April 30, the Ontario Superior Court struck down the provincial Theatres Act, ruling that the censorial powers it granted to the Ontario Film Review Board and to the Ministry of Consumer and Business Services violated freedom of expression under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Struggling to meet sales targets for The Gospel of John and dealing with the resignation of all but one director, Toronto-based Visual Bible International’s grand plans to produce word-for-word retellings of all 66 books of the Bible by 2015 may have hit something significantly stronger than the walls of Jericho.