Canada’s preeminent boutique distributor Mongrel Media has scooped its competitors and picked up a 10-picture output deal with Sony Pictures Classics.
‘We are thrilled,’ says Mongrel president Hussain Amarshi. ‘They [SPC co-presidents Michael Barker and Tom Bernard] have phenomenal taste in films and it’s a privilege to be associating with them.’
For an undisclosed sum, the deal gives Mongrel all Canadian rights to seven of the 10 films, and all Canadian rights except Quebec for the remaining three.

Montreal: London-based Signpost Films has put its Canadian operations on indefinite hold with no plans to open any international territorial offices before spring of next year. In an interview from Los Angeles, Signpost chairman Henry Winterstern said, ‘The timing is such that we will roll the opcos [territorial company operations] in time for the release of our product, and we feel we will not have product to release in Canada before the spring of 2003.’

In the May 4 editorial, Playback editor Samantha Yaffe expressed confidence that Canada is and will remain the first choice for location shooting, despite attempts by a U.S. coalition to combat production incentives. While I also believe that Canada continues to be at the forefront of location choices for U.S.-based producers, having just returned from Los Angeles and a series of meetings with various producers, financiers and distributors, my optimism is slightly more guarded. On more than one occasion in these meetings certain issues were raised which led me to believe that notwithstanding any anti-runaway production lobby, we may be losing productions that would otherwise have come to Canada.

Cinar AGM set for April 29

Asked how often Playback readers watch Canadian drama on TV, 17.65% responded very often, 40.34% claimed sometimes and an alarming 42.02% said never.

Adam Ostry, CEO of the Ontario Media Development Corporation and self-described ‘policy wonk,’ has decided not to renew his three-year term with the agency that ends May 17.

Under the new ownership of Corus Entertainment and with the goal of becoming the number-one-rated specialty channel in Canada, WTN is set to relaunch on April 15 with a new name and look, a Western feed and a commitment to license five new, original dramatic programs.

Vancouver: An American MOW producer once told me: ‘I can’t roll out of bed in Vancouver without making money.’

Montreal: Men With Brooms is rekindling Canadian moviemaking aspirations, scoring $1,040,000 in box office over its opening three-day, March 8-10 weekend. The film ranked fourth nationally, drawing a predominantly older 25-54, equally male-female skewed audience, according to AC Nielsen’s Entertainment Data Industries.

Montreal: Local distributors are highly critical of the Quebec government’s signing of a four-year distribution deal with the Motion Picture Association of America, claiming their advice has been totally ignored.

Montreal: Prominent individuals in the Canadian production industry are joining together to ensure an industry award is named in honor of Don Haig, who passed away at his Toronto home on Saturday, March 2 at the age of 69.

Vancouver: The stock market may be drawing sad faces for most entertainment companies, but that hasn’t dissuaded Delaney and Friends Cartoon Productions of Vancouver from going public.

* Leslie Sole has been appointed CEO, television, for Rogers Broadcasting. Sole has managed CFMT-TV since 1990 and has overseen the launch of Biography, TechTV and MSNBC.

Should Vision TV’s Lord Have Mercy get the green light from its funding sources, the new series will be the only true-to-form sitcom – three cameras, studio audiences and only a handful of sets – being produced in Canada.

Two years after leaving her post as CBC network program director, Phyllis Platt has several projects on the go at her new independent prodco, Platt Productions.
Combining her background in news and current affairs with her experience in arts and entertainment, Platt is positioning her company as a production partner to companies with an existing infrastructure, focusing on reality-based programming.
Platt has five MOWs in development, one of which is up for the next round of CTF financing. The tentatively titled Poisoned Waters, a coproduction with Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions and Regina-based Minds Eye Pictures, is a drama mirroring recent contaminated water incidents in Walkerton, ON and North Battleford, SK.