Producer Vince Buda and actor/writer Matt Wells launch Greater Hood Productions focusing on stories of truth, resilience and the perseverance of the human spirit

March 18, 2022 Greg David

From a media release:

Canadian film and television producer Vince Buda (Brown Girl Begins, Crown and Anchor, The New Normal) and actor, writer and musician Matt Wells (Crown and Anchor, MuchMusic, Schitt’s Creek) are pleased to announce the launch of new production company, Greater Hood Productions.

The first slate of original content includes podcast Good Things with Matt Wells, travel/motivational docuseries Moving On, and an untitled feature film based on the best-selling basketball memoir Chasing A Dream by Carl English.

Good Things with Matt Wells (Podcast)
Premiering on March 21, Good Things with Matt Wells (available on all major podcast platforms) revisits Wells’ passion from his past career as an acclaimed interviewer for Bravo, MTV, MuchMusic and MuchMore. Wells explores the ups and downs of life, love and career through inspiring conversations with incredible people who remind us that sometimes it has to get bad before it gets better and that good things are around the corner. In each episode, Wells gets intimate to explore how those we admire faced professional and personal setbacks, found the light through the darkness and learned about life and themselves in the process.

The first season features conversations with:

Canadian Politician and NDP Leader, Jagmeet Singh,
Six-time Olympic Medalist Clara Hughes,
Platinum-selling artist Serena Ryder,
Canada’s Drag Race winner Priyanka,
Renowned American musician Walter Schreifels (Quicksand, Rival Schools),
Musician and best-selling author Séan McCann (Great Big Sea),
Big Brother Canada Host and Executive Producer Arisa Cox,
Writer and director Sharon Lewis (Brown Girl Begins, Hudson and Rex, Murdoch Mysteries),
Co-Host of The Social Cynthia Loyst,
Sportsnet Host and musician Tara Slone,
Acclaimed actor Michael Rowe (Arrow, Ninjak vs. The Valiant Universe)

More guests will be announced throughout the season.

Moving On (Docuseries – Travel/Motivational)
This inspiring and therapeutic travelogue docuseries sees decorated Olympian Clara Hughes and acclaimed musician Séan McCann (Great Big Sea) push themselves physically and mentally as they explore some of the world’s most iconic, breathtaking and extreme hiking trails. Despite the duo’s iconic careers, Hughes and McCann have experienced rock bottom moments and struggled with addiction and mental health. Their fight for themselves and others now bring them together as renowned mental health advocates and friends. On the trails, they will battle the elements and embrace the healing powers of Mother Earth, movement and music.

Chasing a Dream (Feature Film)
Based on the best-selling basketball memoir Chasing a Dream by Carl English, this film follows the story of five-year-old English who loses his parents in a tragic fire in 1986. After being separated from his brothers and taken in by relatives, English eventually finds an obsessive love of basketball to mask the trauma and grief of his loss. This passion for the sport takes him out of his small town and to the brink of the NBA. From a makeshift hoop on the side of a highway to the NCAA, to European basketball stardom and ultimately going head-to-head with Kobe Bryant, basketball not only changed his life….it saved it.

About Vince Buda
Vince Buda is a producer, director and production executive with almost 20 years of experience and over 65 credits in live event programming, scripted and unscripted television, documentary, feature-length and short films. His career began as a production assistant on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and visual effects coordinator on TRON: Legacy. His recent projects include the world-renowned Scotiabank Giller Prize (CBC); New Year’s Eve special, From Ontario With Love (TVO); the critically acclaimed docuseries, Anyone’s Game (CBC); the docuseries While the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of the American Government with Jeffrey Wright (VICE-TV); and the multiple award-winning short film, The New Normal.

About Matt Wells
Actor, writer and musician Matt Wells is best known for creating, producing and starring in the critically acclaimed film Crown and Anchor. His entertainment journey began as frontman for the notorious Newfoundland hardcore-punk band Bucket Truck. It led him to become a respected journalist for MuchMusic, Bravo and MTV, where he interviewed everyone from The Police, Quentin Tarantino and Lee Daniels to Mariah Carey, Sir Ben Kingsley, and Lady Gaga. Since shifting his focus to acting and filmmaking, he’s appeared in Schitt’s Creek, Designated Survivor, Murdoch Mysteries, and the multiple award-winning short films The New Normal, as well as Poison in the Water, which he co-wrote with his daughter. Wells is represented by Carolyn Sterling at Grand Wave Entertainment.

About Greater Hood Productions
Greater Hood Productions is the brainchild of Vince Buda and Matt Wells born out of long conversations on even longer socially distanced walks during the pandemic. The full-service production house is dedicated to creating, developing and producing film, television, documentaries, podcasts and more that explore the ideas that fall through the cracks — stories of truth, resilience and the perseverance of the human spirit. www.greaterhood.ca

Industry News, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Cottage Life captures a rare glimpse into vibrant cultures, landmarks and landscapes with new original investigative series Mysteries from Above

March 17, 2022 Greg David

From a media release:

Cottage Life’s new original investigative series Mysteries from Above (10×60’; HD) takes to the skies to offer Canadian audiences a chance to see the world from fresh and exhilarating perspectives. The series explores remote, hard-to-reach locations as drones explore strange geological occurrences, unique man-made structures, curious creatures and lost civilizations, revealing fascinating insights and never-before-seen footage to the viewers.

Each episode follows four unique storylines from developed and isolated aerial vantage points, with in-depth analysis and narration from world-leading experts including Dr. Karen Bellinger, Anthropologist and Historical Archaeologist; Dr. Cylita Guy, Ecologist and Data Scientist; Dr. Dan Riskin, Evolutionary Biologist; Anthony Morgan, Science Communicator; Dr. Jean Li, Archaeologist; George Kourounis, Explorer-in-Residence for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society; and many more.

The world broadcast premiere of Mysteries from Above airs Sunday, March 27, 2022, at 10 p.m. ET/PT, exclusively on Cottage Life during the channel’s eight-week free preview event, running now until May 1 across 8 million Canadian households.

Engage with Cottage Life: @cottagelife #MysteriesFromAbove

The first two episodes of Mysteries from Above include:

Episode 1 – Accidental Discoveries
March 27 at 10 p.m. ET/PT
Using drone operators and satellite imagery enthusiasts find a vanished Neolithic structure in an Irish farmer’s field, an ancient oasis in the remote reaches of a Chinese desert, a centuries-old buried treasure in the UK and a dreaded predator makes nice in the Pacific Ocean. All of these events are discovered by accident.

Episode 2 – Military Mysteries
April 3 at 10 p.m. ET/PT
Military mysteries are revealed from above; a Nazi weapon designed to turn the tides of WWII in Northern France, a secret Russian military tower in the shadow of the Chernobyl disaster, a forgotten Australian tunnel rumoured to hide a nuclear lab and something shocking buried under San Francisco’s infamous Alcatraz Prison.

Mysteries from Above is a Cottage Life original series, produced by Saloon Media, a Blue Ant Media company. Sarah Zammit serves as the Series Producer. Michael Kot, Betty Orr, Pam McNair and Tara Elwood serve as Executive Producers. Suzan Yum serves as Director on the series.

Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Randy Spracklin and his team are rockin’ it in Rock Solid Builds

March 16, 2022 Greg David 3 Comments

One of the most creative and entertaining home renovation shows on the air right now is Rock Solid Builds.

Airing Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on HGTV Canada, Rock Solid Builds is a flurry of construction, music, practical jokes and unique terminology all set in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and its surrounding communities. At the heart of the whirlwind is Randy Spracklin.

Spracklin is a third-generation builder and co-owner of Newfound Builders, based out of Brigus, Nfld., who reveals that despite wanting to grow his family-run business via additional staff—like his dad Scott, and team members Nikki, Paul and Josh, who appear on-camera—television wasn’t in his plans. In fact, if it wasn’t for checking his email’s junk folder and seeing one from production company Cineflix one day, Rock Solid Builds never would have happened.

“I got an email from Cineflix looking for an east coast TV show,” Spracklin remembers. “I looked at it and thought, ‘Is this real? Is this something?'” He responded to the email, did some Zoom calls, created a sizzle reel for Cineflix and things went from there.

“We’ve joked about TV over the years, but little did we think that we would be on it,” he says. “I guess the universe was saying, ‘You thought about it… here it is.”

Spracklin is Rock Solid Builds‘ jovial host, serving as the viewers’ guide to countless projects, from new builds to additions, kitchen and bathroom renovations and even the odd root cellar needing an update. A dramatic storytelling point in shows like these is when things go wrong, like a septic line being cracked or a floor suddenly needing to be re-supported. But where most hosts roll their eyes and worry for a segment or two, Spracklin takes it all in stride, usually with a joke and a crooked smile while wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the word Mint. What you see on camera is exactly what Newfound Builders tackle every day from sun-up to sun-down, including weather that can suddenly turn nasty, to supply chain issues that can occur when you live and work on an island.

“We’re looking for specialty items and they can be manufactured all over the world and sometimes the only way to get here is by boat or by plane,” Spracklin says. “And, what we’ve faced in the past year are even more shortages so, yeah, there are cases where we can’t move forward and finish the plumbing or close in the ceilings. You have to be creative and try to work around that.”

Some of those items are simply stunning, serving as showcases to the magnificent work unveiled at the end of each instalment of Rock Solid Builds. Those reveals are immediately followed by the obligatory feast in the homeowners’ kitchen, a legit part of Newfoundland life.

“If you can’t have a drink with the homeowners, then you didn’t do a good job,” Spracklin says. “To be able to sit around a table with them and the team—because everyone puts a lot of work into it—and have a cheers about it… cameras or no cameras, we would be doing it.”

Rock Solid Builds airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on HGTV Canada.

Images courtesy of Cineflix.

Industry News

Blink49 Studios plans TV adaptation of internationally bestselling author Marissa Stapley’s sophomore novel ‘Things To Do When It’s Raining’

March 15, 2022 Greg David

From a media release:

BLINK49 STUDIOS, the recently launched content venture-backed by global film and TV studio Endeavor Content, has pre-empted rights to New York Times bestselling author Marissa Stapley’s second novel, Things To Do When It’s Raining, a Canadian epic romantic drama.

Things To Do When It’s Raining, which will be set in Canada’s 1,000 Islands, centers around a woman who is driven by deception and despair to return home from the city to her grandparent’s inn. There, she encounters Gabe, the island-dwelling boy who was her companion as a child and her first love as a teenage girl, but then disappeared from her life without a trace. The ultimately life affirming story unravels the past and braids together three generations of love affairs. Things To Do When It’s Raining published with Simon & Schuster Canada and Graydon House US in 2018 and has since sold in Germany, Norway, the Czech Republic, Italy, Turkey, France, and Slovakia. Interest in the property renewed after Stapley’s 2021 novel Lucky became the first Canadian novel to be selected for Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club.

BLINK49 STUDIOS will serve as the studio for the television adaption. Newman and Rankin will Executive Produce the series on behalf of BLINK49.

Marissa Stapley is the internationally bestselling author of four novels, most recently the New York Times bestselling Lucky (S&S Canada), which was selected as a Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick in December 2021. Her first novel was Mating for Life (published by S&S Canada, Atria US, Rowohlt Germany); then Things to Do When It’s Raining (S&S Canada, Graydon House US, multiple translation territories); followed by The Last Resort (S&S Canada, Graydon House, Allen & Unwin ANZ, and multiple translation territories). The Last Resort was named one of 2019’s Best Beach Reads by Oprah Magazine, New York Post and The Globe and Mail, and shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis Award (Best Crime Fiction Novel). Stapley recently teamed up with bestselling author Karma Brown (Recipe for a Perfect Wife), as the writing duo Maggie Knox to publish holiday romances, launching with The Holiday Swap, which was an instant bestseller and is already under option for TV (Putnam US/Penguin Canada/Hodder Books).

BLINK49 STUDIOS is a newly launched content venture with Endeavor Content as its anchor investor and lead strategic partner. Focusing heavily on a creative-first approach, BLINK49 STUDIOS is dedicated to partnering with best-in-class writers, creators and producers, as well as aggressively pursuing IP in Canada and throughout the world. Committed to applying significant resources to support new and diverse Canadian voices, the indie studio recently acquired the rights to “Hold My Girl”, the upcoming novel from emerging Canadian author Charlene Carr.