Originally, it was a point of pride among the makers of Weirdsville that the black comedy would be set and shot in the dark cold of winter in a small Prairie town.

As it turns out, the locations in Saskatchewan didn't look - well - just didn't look quite right.

"We looked at the photographs of some of the small towns near Regina, and it didn't seem worth going all way out there," says director Allan Moyle. "There would be a main street but there'd be a 7-Eleven in the middle of it."

The project settled in southern Ontario and instead made ample use of the "more authentic" main drag in Brantford.

"That's our hero street," says Moyle, going on to praise its layout and turn-of-the-century lampposts.

Moyle - working under producer Nicholas Tabarrok of Darius Films and exec producers Michael Baker, Morris Ruskin and Perry Zimel - wrapped the 25-day shoot earlier this month. He's billing the Will Wennekers story as a "Canadian Trainspotting."

"It follows junkies but it's not as violent," says Moyle (Pump up the Volume, New Waterford Girl ). "It's more funny. Much, much funnier, but I think our dopers are just as authentic."

And yet, Moyle admits he wasn't convinced that the movie - which opens with two junkies trying to bury a corpse at a drive-in theater - would work until recently, when he saw some rough edits.

"I wasn't sure because we have [material that is] dead serious, cheek and jowl with madness and outrageous comedy. But because we play the comedy straight it's working. I was very relieved," he says.

Taryn Manning (Hustle & Flow) and Wes Bentley (The Four Feathers) star with Scott Speedman (Underworld: Evolution), Greg Bryk (A History of Violence) and Raoul Bhaneja (Train 48). Adam Swica (The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico) is DOP.

The $5- to $6-million picture is backed by Telefilm Canada, the CTF, Ontario Media Development Corporation and The Harold Greenberg Fund, a foreign advance from Shoreline Entertainment and prebuys with The Movie Network and Movie Central.

ThinkFilm will handle Canada, while Screen Media distributes in the U.S.

The film will go on the festival circuit this fall to make buzz for, it is hoped, a wider-than-usual commercial play.

But, of course, that's easier said than done. Moyle notes that his New Waterford Girl never made it to U.S. theaters despite a strong showing in Canada in 1999. "It's a perfectly fine movie, but it never even opened in the States," he says, but adds it "was also a very slight, very sweet, small movie. So the story itself may not have had enough energy to compete."

Weirdsville, on the other hand, is an "unabashed shot at the commercial market."