THE BIG NICKEL

Genre: Drama
Period: Present day
Producers: Nicholas Kendall, TBA
Attached director: Nicholas Kendall
Writer: John Barker
Attached cast: TBA
Proposed cast: TBA
Locations: Canada
Budget: CDN$7.8 million
Target Market: Adult 14+

Synopsis:

Failed businessman Adam Patterson is on the run from a couple of thug like creditors. Planning to skip town, he stashes the remains of his company's dwindling funds in a suitcase under his father's nursing home bed.

Returning the next morning to retrieve the money, Adam is appalled to find the suitcase missing - Bert, Adam's senile father, has moved it and can't remember where. After locating the suitcase, Adam and Bert flee the rest home with the creditors in hot pursuit. Adam has no alternative but to go on the lam with Bert in tow.

Bert, demand they head towards The Big Nickel, a shrine to miners of yesteryear, on a long delayed family pilgrimage. En route, Bert throws the maps to the wind, starts a fight and falls in love with Lynn, a mechanic bearing an uncanny resemblance to his deceased wife Mary.

As they near the Big Nickel, Bert gets a chance to redeem himself for his failures as a husband and father and teaches Adam a thing or two about faith and responsibility.

Partial Canadian financing in place. Seeking co-production and co-financing

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THE SINGING HOUSE

Genre: Drama
Period: Present day
Producers: Nicholas Kendall
Attached director: Nicholas Kendall, TBA
Writer: Janette Griffiths
Attached cast: TBA
Proposed cast: TBA
Locations: England, Italy, Germany
Budget: CDN$15 Million
Target Market: Adult 18+

Synopsis:

On the eve of her wedding, Rose Lorenzo, is offered a ticket to Covent Garden by an eccentric stranger, Otto Winterbourne. To her astonishment, Rose sits through Wagner's five-hour opera, Tristan and Isolde enraptured by the performance. At 39, Rose cancels her wedding because she has heard in Wagner's passionate, sensuous music something that she knows will be lost forever if she settles for last-chance marriage to sensible Martin.

As a magical snow falls across Europe, Rose sets off with Otto and his twin sister Eva on a operatic pilgrimage to La Scala, Venice and Munich. They encounter the "world's greatest operatic singer". the legendary and deeply lonely Leo Dalla Vigna. But behind Leo lurks the enduring pull of his unstable, mysterious wife who lives alone in their villa on the Italian Lake.

Bringing the tone of THE RED VIOLIN and BRIDGET JONES' DIARY, this is an unusual road movie which follows Rose Lorenzo as she searches among Europe's great opera houses for the love of her life. The SINGING HOUSE is a character driven drama, which explores the boundaries between art and life, fantasy and reality. A bittersweet journey into the challenges of romance and the obession with operatic stardom.

In development seeking coproducing and co-financing.

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CHASING THE STARS

Genre: Coming of age drama
Period: 1950's
Producer: Nicholas Kendall
Attached director: Nicholas Kendall
Writer: Leanne Baugh-Peterson
Attached cast: TBA
Proposed cast: TBA
Locations: Jasper, Alberta, Canada
Budget: $7 million
Target Market: Family

Synopsis:

Eleven-year old Lily Mitchell longs for a summer of biking mountain roads and swimming in glacial lakes with her best friend, Will, and gazing at stars and planets in the night sky with her father, Phil. But in the summer of 1953, Marilyn Monroe and her fellow actors arrive in her sleepy town of Jasper, Alberta, to film River of No Return, turning Lily’s world upside down.

While the whole town is ‘going ape’ over the Hollywood stars, especially Lily’s sixteen-year old sister, Valerie, who is determined to be discovered by the film’s famous director, Otto Preminger, Lily’s summer plans come to an abrupt halt. She and Will are challenged to a bet by friends, Howie and Thomas, to see which duo is the first to get Marilyn Monroe’s autograph. Lily reluctantly joins in the boys’ escapades but is unprepared for the strange, new feelings that begin to simmer between her and Will.

Lily’s once normal life suddenly seems complicated – and not only by her body which is now blossoming, nudging her toward womanhood. Her sister’s rebelliousness constantly antagonises their mother, Jean, and wild mood swings have started to transform her father into a person Lily no longer recognizes.
But by the end of the summer an even bigger event will change Lily’s life forever. And Marilyn Monroe is the only person Lily knows who can truly understand.

Seeking co-production and co-financing partners.

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