At the risk of being accused of being Toronto-centric, I’d like somebody to explain to me the value of having seven production centers in Canada.

As recently as a couple of months ago, Alex Olegnowicz, president of Toronto’s Imarion Post Production, noted pessimism among his clients, not to mention several shows not going forward. ‘The market is way tighter,’ he told Playback then, citing the impact of the drop in the federal government’s annual Canadian Television Fund allotment. But now, with the feds having restored their contribution to $100 million a year for the next two years, a dark cloud has lifted.

Calibre Digital Pictures has an ‘Evel’ production in its midst, as in Evil Knievel, a Turner Network Television MOW about the 1970s car-jumping daredevil extraordinaire. The Toronto animation and FX shop is in production on the movie based on the life of Knievel, who launched his motorcycle stunt career in 1965, drawing ever-bigger crowds for his (barely) death-defying feats.

Toronto: The same mix of Maya and proprietary software that gave life to Gollum in The Lord of the Rings will next be used to animate a much less sinister character, the spunky 13-year-old girl at the front of Nelvana’s Jane and the Dragon. The 26 x 30 series is a coproduction with Weta Workshop, the suddenly famous New Zealand outfit that did the CG for all those orcs, trolls and otherworldly what-not in the Peter Jackson trilogy, scoring an Oscar and BAFTA earlier this year. Jackson is part owner of the company.

A night at the opera

The Beowulf man

Vancouver: Perhaps Canada’s first foray into edgier U.S. cable-style drama, Terminal City will go into production in Vancouver in September. The Crescent Entertainment project – made in partnership with Vancouver creator Angus Fraser (Big Dog Productions) – deals with the touchy subject of cancer.
In the 10 one-hour limited series, a woman becomes the host of a reality show that chronicles her battle with cancer – a journey that has her dealing with celebrity, family and her own demise.

Friends & neighbors

Titanic 2D

Ontario producers did not get their wish from Minster of Finance Greg Sorbara, who on May 18 delivered a new provincial budget in Toronto, keeping the hot-button Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit at 20% despite calls for a significant boost.

Despite its success in generating Canadian audiences with shows like Degrassi: The Next Generation, The Eleventh Hour and Corner Gas – some of Canada’s most-watched domestic programs in 2003 – CTV saw its English-language drama allocation drop to 21% in 2004 from an average of 30% over the previous three years in the May 14 funding decisions from the Canadian Television Fund, as directed by Telefilm Canada.

Toronto-based Peace Arch Entertainment Group has signed a three-year, 15-picture output deal with Showtime Networks. The cofinancing and distribution agreement, worth up to $225 million if all the movies are completed by 2007, means Peace Arch will handle theatrical distribution in Canada and internationally, while Showtime will air in the U.S.

The CRTC hopes that by allowing more advertisements on TV it can revive English Canada’s ailing drama scene and has proposed a series of ad time rewards for broadcasters – to boost the airtime, viewership and spends of high-budget, original shows – but has set aside calls for time credits, reduced Part 2 fees and stiffer regulations.

Summertime, and the living is not as easy as it used to be, at least not for execs at CTV and CBC, who this month revealed some of their programming plans for the next three months. Their schedules reflect the increasing competitiveness of the summer season which, no longer a long, hot wasteland of reruns and filler, has this year been crammed with high-draw reality on one side and a smattering of Hollywood and Canadiana on the other.

The closure of Halifax-based Salter Street Films did not slow Michael Donovan and Charles Bishop for long. The two former Salter principals launched a new prodco, The Halifax Film Company, in the city’s Electropolis Studios May 14, five months after parent company Alliance Atlantis Communications closed the doors on one of Halifax’s most productive companies.