As president of newly integrated Corus Television and Nelvana, Paul Robertson faces a $200-million writedown on the animation company, and although merchandising will play a role in turning it around, Robertson is not planning to transform Nelvana into a toy store as some industry pundits have urged.
‘Merchandising is not going to be the driver on all the projects,’ says Robertson. ‘We would like to do more projects like Jerolemon Street Players or Braceface that have so much merit as standalone TV shows.’

Deepa Mehta’s Canadian musical/comedy Bollywood/Hollywood opened Oct. 27 with a weekend take of $306,000, representing an impressive $8,700-per-screen average.

Telefilm Canada has announced a series of deadlines for English (national) and French-language submissions to the Canada Feature Film Fund main program in 2003/04.

Few Canadians tuned in to see how to Escape from the Newsroom.

Montreal: Andre Turpin’s Un Crabe dans la tete is Canada’s entry in the best foreign-language film category at the 2003 Academy Awards.

A recent deal between Alliance Atlantis Communications and CBC stands to boost independent television production by consolidating licence fees and, perhaps, reviving TV dramas. Both companies announced on Oct. 29 that a three-year agreement has been struck to co-commission more television projects, including children’s programming and dramatic series.

The upcoming edition of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television’s Speaker Series features a three-part presentation by Telefilm Canada executive director Richard Stursberg on the general subject ‘The ABCs of Audience Building in Canada.’ The 90-minute midday program includes lunch followed by a presentation by Stursberg and a question period.

Ouch. Asked to rate the promotion of Canadian TV by the Gemini Awards, 42.7% of Playback readers answered that they did not watch any of the three-night awardathon that aired Nov 2-3 on local cable and Nov. 4 on CBC. In terms of it’s ability to promote Canadian television 34.6% rated it ‘poor.’ The Geminis got ‘adequate’ marks from 15.3% and only 7.2% thought it was ‘excellent.’

In the Oct.14 issue, The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie was identified as a Minds Eye Pictures production. The feature is produced by Calgary-based Nomadic Pictures and Anafi Productions of the U.K., a subsidiary of Visionview Films.

Vancouver: The Nov. 1 appointment of a new B.C. film commissioner by the B.C. Ministry of Competition, Science and Enterprise suggests that longstanding plans to maximize efficiencies by amalgamating marketer BC Film Commission with funder British Columbia Film have lost to the status quo.

* At Vancouver-based Bardel Entertainment, Christine Larocque has been named VP of production and is currently engaged in the final stretch of production on Bardel’s first made-for-television property, The Christmas Orange. Larocque has more than 30 years of executive animation experience for major studios such as Fox Feature Animation, MGM, Sunbow and Columbia Pictures.

Vancouver: Leaders at Vancouver’s largest production support unions are recommending members ratify new three-year master collective agreements that are expected to contain costs and make Vancouver more competitive for producers.