Toronto animation house Cuppa Coffee says it has turned down a sale offer of US$38 million from a consortium between a Japanese broadcaster and a U.S. network. The deal, put forward in the summer, reportedly included the cost of opening a new Cuppa studio in Tokyo catering to the Asian market and came with certain performance clauses.

Big Idea for DKP

Vancouver: Producer and festival programmer Michael Ghent is exploring the potential of a new public-private partnership for B.C. documentary filmmakers.
DocWatch, a proposal by the B.C. branch of the Canadian Independent Film Caucus, suggests B.C. documentary producers can do more to build their audiences if they pool their financial resources for publicity. For example, if 15 documentary productions ante up $5,000 each toward publicity and hand it over to DocWatch, that’s $75,000. With matching funds or sponsorship from British Columbia Film, Telefilm Canada and other funders, the publicity kitty could grow to $187,000, says Ghent.

Measha Brueggergosman – Spirit in Her Voice, from Bill Kendrick’s Prince Edward Island-based Island Images, focuses on the 24-year-old Fredericton-born singer who is on the cusp of becoming a major voice in classical music. The performing arts documentary combines live performances with doc coverage of Brueggergosman’s art and life. Kendrick produces and directs the $700,000 production, which will air on CBC’s Opening Night in fall 2003.

Atom Egoyan and Alliance Atlantis have a Foolproof plan, and recently joined efforts to produce the new caper pic by William Phillips, the rising-star filmmaker who turned heads a little over a year ago with his oddball debut Treed Murray.
Egoyan, who shares exec producer credit with Alliance Atlantis Entertainment Group CEO Peter Sussman, says he was impressed by Phillips’ previous work and thinks Foolproof could be the young writer/director’s ‘breakthrough project.’ Seaton McLean and Bill House also produce.

It’s been about a year since Fred Fuchs (The Godfather Part 3, Dracula) left the top job at American Zoetrope and relocated, with his Canadian-born wife, from San Francisco to Toronto. The noted producer has since hooked up with a variety of Canuck companies and will likely see his first north-of-the-border film, Bleeding by B.C.-based Crescent Entertainment, go to camera later this month.

Montreal: Muse Entertainment Enterprises, Barbara Samuels of Mindless Entertainment and Australia’s largest independent TV drama production company, Beyond Simpson Le Mesurier, are developing Answered By Fire. The four-hour miniseries chronicles the experiences of Canadian and Australian police officers serving as UN peacekeepers in East Timor and the young Timorese woman they befriend. The $7-milllion coproduction (about 40% Canadian) is set against the lead-up to East Timor’s referendum on independence in 1999 and its bloody aftermath.

Canadian film representatives, at press time, were set to descend on the federal Ministry of Finance in Ottawa for a series of meetings pitching the ‘urgent’ need for expanded tax incentives to preserve jobs and investment.
David McLean, owner of Vancouver Film Studios, members of the Directors Guild of Canada and the CFTPA each booked meetings between Dec. 12 and Dec. 18 to discuss strategies to repair dwindling service production volumes in Canada.

Lack of information about CBC’s new documentary unit is rattling the cages of independent filmmakers, who fear the country’s leading doc producer is quietly stepping back from third-party productions.
Doc makers learned earlier this year that CBC had formed CineNorth, an in-house documentary unit headed by veteran producer Mark Starowicz, and worry that the group stands to put a dent in their bottom line by snapping up deals with Witness, Life & Times and other network shows. Many are further concerned by what they deem CineNorth’s ‘secretive’ behavior.

Montreal: Telefilm Canada executive director Richard Stursberg has outlined a number of strategic proposals aimed at consolidating and expanding French-language film and TV production beyond the relatively small home market.

For the first time in its 48-year history, CHUM Limited is no longer led by a member of the Waters family. Eighty-one-year-old founder and controlling shareholder Allan Waters stepped down on Dec. 2, passing day-to-day control of Toronto’s radio and TV powerhouse to newly appointed president and CEO Jay Switzer.

Montreal: Distrib Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm reports the Charles Biname historical adaptation Seraphin – Un homme et son peche has set an opening week record for a Quebec film at the box office with receipts of $1.6 million. The film opened on 123 screens, ranking number one over the Nov. 29 to Dec. 1 weekend and bringing in just over $1 million, or 34% of the total take. Over the Dec. 6-8 weekend, Seraphin, still in top spot, pulled in an additional $787,000 for an opening 10-day take of $2.4 million.

Nelvana cuts continue

Once touted as the perfect equation for a successful diginet, Toronto-based PrideVision TV, owned by Headline Media Group, was forced to close its Church Street studio Dec. 13, losing seven staff, leaving it with a total of eight full- and part-time staff at its King Street headquarters.
Launched in fall 2001, targeting the niche gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered market, the station has struggled to grow beyond its current subscriber base of 20,000.

Episodes one and two of The Eleventh Hour both got clocked – bringing less than half a million viewers to CTV and casting doubt on the future of Canada’s only new English-language drama. Just 404,000 Canadians tuned in for the Nov. 26 debut, followed by 456,000 on Dec. 3.