✖
The Burning Question
How much singing and dancing can audiences stand? Prepare to find out as CTV and CanWest roll out mid-season schedules light on scripts and heavy on reality, while CBC makes its move with Cancon dramas like jPod and The Border. All of which raises the question:
People
• Noah Cowan has been replaced as co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival by veteran film programmer and broadcaster Cameron Bailey. Cowan is now artistic director of Bell Lightbox, the festival’s future year-round home, stepping in for the departed Jim Hamilton.
Sold!
• Image Entertainment re-upped its output deal with Entertainment One and its subsidiaries, expanding their current deal to more than 3,000 titles running until 2012. Entertainment One will hold the theatrical, home, TV and digital rights for Image titles and its subsidiaries, including horror flick Stuck and My Name Is Bruce with Bruce Campbell.
Big-budget stop-motion wrapping in B.C.
Infinity Features (Capote) has hooked up with Perfect Circle Productions (The Timekeeper) to make Canada’s first stop-motion animated feature film, the $10-million Edison and Leo.
How Jimmy escaped hell
Breakthrough Animation has gone into production on the first season of its new animated comedy series Jimmy Two Shoes, which the Toronto prodco is producing in collaboration with Teletoon and Jetix Europe. But they’ve dropped that whole ‘little boy in hell’ idea.
Natali goes back to the future with Splice
The spectre of genetic experimentation forms the crux of Vincenzo Natali’s new film Splice, currently shooting in Toronto.
Aniston goes Traveling
Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart are set to star in the romantic drama Traveling, which is scheduled to shoot Jan. 14 to March 6 in B.C. for Universal. Screenwriter Brandon Camp (Dragonfly) makes his directorial debut, working from the script he cowrote with Mike Thompson about a self-help writer who falls for a woman who attends one of his seminars, only to realize he has not yet come to terms with the death of his wife. It shoots until March and is due on screens in 2008.
Sarsgaard Orhpan-ed
House of Wax director Jaume Collet-Serra has brought his latest to Toronto, and is shooting The Orphan with Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga at Cinespace Film Studios. The story by first-timer David Johnson follows a husband and wife who, bereaved of their baby, adopt a mysterious nine-year-old girl. Don Carmody (Silent Hill, Skinwalkers) exec produces the thriller, which Warner Bros. plans to release later this year.
Collaborative editing in cyberspace
Jonathan Baltrusaitis is the Calgary-based editor of In a World Created by a Drunken God, a made-for-TV movie based on the play by Drew Hayden Taylor about a half-native man who is approached to donate a kidney to the father he never knew. The Pyramid Productions movie is slated to premiere on APTN in 2008.
Acquisitions create powerhouse post shops
A wave of consolidation has changed Canada’s post-production landscape, creating bigger players that are better able to compete, both nationally and around the world.
Post delays meant drama for Arcand’s Days of Darkness
Oscar-winning producer Denise Robert tells new filmmakers to schedule plenty of time for post-production – advice she wishes she’d taken herself when scheduling Days of Darkness.
Post Modern sends a message to Hollywood
Despite increased consolidation in Canada’s post-production industry and fluctuating North American currencies, Vancouver’s Post Modern Sound is vocally optimistic about the future.
Specialty turns hard-hat TV to gold
Canadian homeowners have made a pretty penny in recent years on the nationwide property boom, and so too has Canada’s HGTV.
Decorating diva’s glad there aren’t too many cooks
Decorating diva Debbie Travis’ brand is synonymous with home decor, and her shows have been analogous with HGTV for nearly a decade.
More eyeballs mean more original programs
Specialty television has often been thought of as conventional’s brassy little sister – with bad skin and a training bra – so its original programming wasn’t always taken seriously.
The definitive CDN broadcast and production resource.Over 5,000 company listings!
