Montreal: Muse Entertainment Enterprises and The Movie Factory of Munich, Germany have started production on the 13-hour adventure fantasy The Neverending Story.

Director Giles Walker (Princes in Exile, Little Men, Emily of New Moon) says the show "has heart - quality drama, warmth, humor and empathetic characters. But we're dressing it with fantastical elements and special effects." The series is being shot in Sony CineAlta High-Definition and is budgeted at close to $20 million using cutting-edge design and techniques including matte paintings, models, mechanical trompe l'oeil and cg special-effects.

The star is 12-year-old Mark Rendall (Olivier, Screech Owls), in the role of a highly imaginative boy who enters a magical world called Fantasia and confronts a dark, unimaginative force known as The Nothing. The series is based on the Michael Ende novel The Neverending Story. To date, three feature films have been adapted from the property, but the Muse/Movie Factory series is the first live-action adaptation for worldwide television.

The Neverending Story is an official Canadian/German co-production. Exec producers are Muse's Michael Prupas and Rolf Schneider of The Movie Factory Film GmbH. Dieter Geissler, producer on the feature films, is series' creative producer. The producer is Irene Litinsky. Supervising producers and writers are David Preston and Leila Basen. The other screenwriter is Karen Howard. Craft credits go to dop Daniel Villeneuve, line producer Michel Chauvin, costume designer Renee April, production designer Collin Niemi, casting agent Andrea Kenyon and Associates and cgi producer Big Bang FX/Animation.

The Neverending Story will be edited in half-hour, one-hour and eight two-hour packages.

Prupas says coproduction continues to be an essential framework for content production, especially in view of the significant producer deficits required for network programming in the u.s.

Muse Distribution International is distributing in Canada and is the sales agent in France. Hallmark Entertainment has rights in English-track international markets including the u.s. and the u.k. Shooting at the Ice Storm Studios goes through to the end of August.

*Rezolution Pictures' cross-over mission

The latest production from Rezolution Pictures filmmakers Ernest Webb and Neil Diamond is the one-hour documentary Cree Spoken Here. The show examines the status of the Cree language is three Northern Quebec communities and was taped over three months as the filmmakers met with people living and working on trap lines and in "goose" or traditional hunting camps. Producer Catherine Bainbridge (In Search of the African Queen: A People-Smuggling Operation) says the production reflects "a new wave of aboriginal talent" as the house positions itself as a "cross-cultural" program supplier to aptn as well as other tv and new media networks. Webb and Diamond, raised in the Cree communities of Chisasibi and Washaganish, respectively, were able to "get in at the source and grassroots with archival material the rest of us had no idea existed," says Bainbridge.