Nelvana has bought North American tv distribution and merchandise licensing rights to Cardcaptor, produced by Kodansha, one of Japan’s leading book and multimedia publishers. The 70-part half-hour adventure series, targeted at the US$1.5 billion market of girls aged six to 11,…

Alliance Atlantis Communications and Ottawa’s Amberwood Productions are teaming up to produce the 13 x half-hour, animated preschool series Pumper Pups. Treehouse tv has licensed the $2-million (us$1.3-million) series for Canada, to begin airing in February 2000, and the coproducers will…

Buoyed by US$10,000 in development funding from nhk, Japan’s national public broadcaster, Montreal doc-maker John Curtin is moving ahead with his hdtv project Ten Seconds of Eternity….

The Toronto International Film Festival lineup will include Norman Jewison’s work-in-progress The Hurricane, starring Denzel Washington as boxer Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, who spent 20 years in jail for a crime he did not commit. The version of the film to be…

The Vancouver office of the crtc has received four letters of intent from broadcasters wanting a piece of the Vancouver/Victoria market….

Vancouver: Famous Players and Cineplex Odeon have offered a new contract to 60 locked-out projectionists in b.c. following an attempt to resolve the protracted dispute by Industrial inquiry commissioner Stephen Kelleher….

After about 18 years in doc and info production, High Road Productions, producers of Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows and CBC Newsworld’s CounterSpin, will launch a division dedicated to fiction. Company president Paul Jay says High Road will make a serious…

Montreal: Behaviour Communications and Ice Storm Digital have reached an agreement in principle for Ice Storm’s acquisition of Behaviour’s Digital Studio. The $500,000 cash deal is in due diligence and is slated to close Sept. 30….

Toronto’s Pinnacle venture capital has purchased a 50% interest in talent agency Burman Management Group for an undisclosed amount. The deal, which is reportedly in the mid-six-figure range, will give Pinnacle 50% ownership of the three-month-old management group….

Two of Astral Communications’ operating divisions have been renamed to forge a stronger link with their parent company – TMN Networks has been changed to Astral Television Networks (atn), and Les Reseaux Premier Choix is now known as Les Chaines Tele-Astral….

Cambium Film & Video has signed a deal with Alliance Atlantis Communications which will see aac distribute Cambium’s new 3D-animated series Monster By Mistake in Latin American and Asian territories. Monster By Mistake, a coprod between Catapult Productions and Cambium, is…

*Shaw ups its share…