Board finalizes agreement for ‘creative laboratory’ with Japanese pubcaster

Remember the good old days of 2002/03, when the loonie sat safely at 63 cents American, when The Aviator was circling Montreal, Cat Woman was stalking Vancouver and Chicago was in T.O.? The U.K.’s Pinewood Shepperton was even going to build a giant film studio on Toronto’s portlands.

Mix Daniel Cook with Don Henderson of Alberta’s Royal Tyrrell Museum and you get Dan Henderson – the name of the lead character in Dino Dan, the new CG/live-action kids series from Toronto’s Sinking Ship Entertainment.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! is headed back to the airwaves through a deal with John Brunton and his Insight Production Company. The new series will be a co-venture (or ‘one-hour weekly ‘shockumentary”) showcasing odd findings gathered from around the world by the gang at Ripley’s.

Preproduction is underway on Deepa Mehta’s latest and most expensive project to date, the $35-million epic Komagata Maru, through Hamilton-Mehta Productions. The true story follows the titular ship that sailed in 1914 to Vancouver with 376 passengers from India aboard, seeking a new life in Canada. Mongrel Media is the Canadian distributor.

David Cronenberg is in talks to helm his first big-budget action pic, the Robert Ludlum adaptation The Matarese Circle, for MGM. The picture, which has Denzel Washington attached to star, comes from Wanted writers Michael Brandt and Derek Haas and Ludlum’s 1979 conspiracy yarn about rival spies confronted with a criminal organization that has infiltrated the government, according to the director’s Toronto office. MGM picked up the rights earlier this year.

Dan for Mayor, a half-hour scripted comedy starring Corner Gas’ Fred Ewanuick, is ‘about a small – but not too small – town and a bartender who suddenly finds himself running for mayor,’ says creator and exec producer Kevin White.

Fresh TV and Blueprint Entertainment have teamed up to coproduce a new teen series, In Maya’s Opinion. The single-camera series is currently in development with Corus Entertainment’s YTV and will follow the ups and downs of an overly imaginative 14-year-old girl though a mix of live action and CG.

Toronto filmmaker Jody Shapiro has signed on to co-direct eight new Green Porno titles for U.S. broadcaster Sundance Channel. Written and conceived by Isabella Rossellini and commissioned by Sundance Channel, the original series featured the actress re-enacting the mating rituals of various garden fauna, including the snail and the earthworm. The new series will see Rossellini venture into the sea alongside new playmates: the shrimp, squid, anchovy, barnacle, limpet, starfish, elephant seal, angler fish and right whale.