Canadian filmmaker to co-direct eight shorts for Sundance Channel, again with Isabella Rossellini

VANCOUVER: Hot on the heels of the debut of his comedy Coopers’ Camera at the Toronto International Film Festival, director Warren Sonoda is back behind the camera on the fantasy flick Merlin & the Book of Beasts.

Brent Butt has wrapped the final episode of Corner Gas, just as his next comedy for CTV and The Comedy Network readies to shoot in Vancouver. The next would-be series from the veteran comic, Hiccups, will shoot its pilot later this month, putting Butt’s wife and Gas cohort Nancy Robertson in the role of a children’s author with emotional issues.

Producers Don Carmody and Chris Brinker are back at work on Boondock Saints – and this month will shoot their long hoped-for sequel to the 1999 cult hit. Shooting on the $8-million Boondock Saints 2 – again about vigilante twins played by Sean Patrick Flanery (Powder, Suicide Kings) and Norman Reedus (Deuces Wild) – will run for seven weeks in Toronto starting Oct. 20, before moving to Boston for four days.

In the works for about two years, CBC’s comedic drama Being Erica started out with a young girl who could go back in time, via her grandma’s paintings, to the 1920s, and morphed into a story about a woman who relives key moments from her own life through time-travelling sessions with a therapist.

Teletoon wants a third season of ‘reality’ cartoon Total Drama from Fresh TV plus 52 episodes of its new comedy Stoked, up from an original order of 26.

Heroic Film Company in Toronto starts work this fall on the live-action How to Be Indie for YTV. The Corus Entertainment channel has added the comedic series to its fall lineup for next year, targeting preteens and their parents with the story of a 13-year-old girl trying to balance her family’s South Asian traditions with her Canadian lifestyle.

Kids writer Tish Cohen and 9 Story Entertainment have struck a deal to turn her novel The Invisible Rules of Zoë into a live-action TV series.