Author: Etan Vlessing

March 29, 2016 8:25am PT by Etan Vlessing

 BBC America

The BBC America drama returns April 14.

As the face of Orphan Black, Tatiana Maslany has captured high ratings playing a cast of clones, each grappling with personal crises and vulnerabilities.

Ahead of the fourth season debut April 14, Maslany opened up about how she juggles a dozen, and counting, different characters in the popular drama on BBC America and Space in Canada. It’s all about staying in the moment.

“The plot is very dense and my brain isn’t a plotty brain,” Maslany told The Hollywood Reporter in Toronto about endless plot twists to produce fourth-season surprises like Delphine’s possible return and Kira’s (Skyler Wexler) backstory.

“It’s an in-the-moment, impulse and instinctual thing. It’s how does a person feel about the situation they’re in. How does it make them react,” she said. 

If there’s a manual on how to play multiple characters beyond help from wig and makeup artists, it’s in Maslany’s dressing room.

“Sometimes I get lost in the plot a little bit. For me, I have to stay in the present moment and not think too much about where we’re going, or what’s controlling events,” Maslany explained.

She admits to sometimes being as confused as her audience about which clone is who, under whose guidance, and who’s not who they say they are. “It’s not a big issue if I’m lost. I can play into that. They’re all discovering in the moment, piecing things together. If I’m doing the same, it’s helpful for me,” Maslany said.

After Orphan Black producer Temple Street Productions cloned another 10 episodes for 2016, the buzz is building around Sarah Manning (Maslany) fighting her way through the factions to follow Beth’s (Maslany) footsteps.

“It [the fourth season] reflects back to what Sarah learnt in the first season, to questions she had then, things she was discovering, and we definitely will understand better what was going on,” Maslany promised. Sarah, Mrs. S, Kendall and Kira apparently will be forced back on the run in the fourth cycle, fleeing a new and faceless enemy with insidious power.

“We mostly go back with Sarah. In her investigation, and in her probing of what’s going on with the truth and this mystery, she ends up going back to places we’ve been before, but we didn’t know why we were there,” Maslany explained. Sarah’s journey will bring some answers for members of the so-called Clone Club.

“When Sarah started, she had no idea about clones, about her true nature, about other characters, so she’s really fallen down the rabbit hole, and she can’t come back from that,” Maslany said. Sarah’s recent sanctuary in Iceland with her daughter? “That was never going to last. She’s constantly searching and her search will go back to the questions she’s always had,” she added.

International Orphan Black

January 18, 2016 12:22pm PT by Etan Vlessing

‘Shadows on the Hudson’  Courtesy of Macmillan

Macmillan Publishers’ in-house film unit has pacted with Canada’s Wildhorse Studios to turn the book into a series.

Macmillan Publishers’ in-house film and TV unit has teamed with Wildhorse Studios to develop the Isaac Bashevis Singer novel Shadows on the Hudson for TV.

The Macmillan Entertainment division tapped Toronto-based Wildhorse to adapt the story about prosperous Jewish exiles in New York City during the late 1940s for network TV and begin production later this year.
 The development deal was announced by Brendan Deneen, executive editor at Macmillan Entertainment, and Wildhorse founder John Benitz.

There’s no word on filming locations, casting and other production details. Shadows on the Hudson centers on Boris Makaver, a devout wealthy businessman and his daughter, Anna.

When Anna begins an affair and runs away with Boris’ best friend, Hertz Grein, their community is turned upside down, testing bonds of friendship as Singer explores the nature of love and exile after World War II.
 
Shadows on the Hudson was first published as a book in 1957 after an earlier Yiddish newspaper serialization.

The novel was later translated into English in 1998. Macmillan Entertainment has set up book-to-screen projects at MGM, Legendary Pictures, Sony Pictures Television and The Weinstein Company.

The book publisher got into page-to-screen development and a production pact with Wildhorse after seeing book-based film franchises like The Hunger Games and Twilight do well at the local multiplex.

International

November 05, 2015 2:28pm PT by Etan Vlessing

 Courtesy of eXtacy Books

Cyrus Yavneh, who also produced ’24’ and the ‘Falling Skies’ pilot, is teaming with Dominant Entertainment for the small screen treatment.

Supernatural producer Cyrus Yavneh has pacted with Toronto-based Dominant Entertainment, led by veteran financier Michael Gianfriddo, to turn The Samsara Chronicles book anthology into a sci-fi TV series.

Los Angeles-based Yavneh, who also produced Fox’s 24 and the Falling Skies pilot, will executive produce and co-showrun the TV adaptation of the book series by authors Diana Kemp and Gabriella Bradley. Production on the first season of The Samsara Chronicles series, or ten episodes, is scheduled to start in spring 2016 in Vancouver.

Kemp has adapted the first book in The Samsara Chronicles series to portray on screen two people, bound by destiny and romance, catapulted into an apocalypse to decide the fate of three worlds. “Samsara is original in story, sound and color design. It will breathe and inhabit on a lavish epic scale that will seduce and nourish considerable viewership and ancillary profits,” Yavneh said in a statement.

Dominant Entertainment CEO Gianfriddo will oversee financing and also executive produce the book-to-TV project. Dominant is also at work with Alan Glazer’s Trimax Media on the $12 million supernatural thriller Shadow Train, now being cast ahead of a planned spring 2016 production in and around Toronto.

TV Development Supernatural