Montreal's Muse Entertainment has water, lots of water, on its mind this summer as it works on three similarly themed disaster miniseries ­- Flood, Superstorm and Killer Wave, the latter under the direction of Bruce McDonald.

The $9.6-million four-hour Killer Wave, for Citytv and USA Network, sees terrorists and a rogue corporation ignite nuclear blasts on the ocean floor, setting off catastrophic waves that threaten much of the U.S. east coast.

"[Muse] called me and told me about the idea," says McDonald (Highway 61, The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess). "I thought, 'Great, this is my summer job!'"

Killer Wave is shooting in Montreal until early August, when it will relocate to Halifax for one more week. It is produced by Irene Litinsky and Michael Prupas of Muse and exec produced by Robert Halmi Sr. of distributor RHI Distribution. Visual effects supervisor is Mario Rachiele (The Barbarian Invasions), who will be working with Buzz Image Group to create the digital effects.

"This is going to be a lot of fun," says McDonald. "There are tidal waves crashing, lots of running, killing and shooting.

"Our budget doesn't really allow for us to do a full-on disaster movie," he adds. "There will be effects, but we also wanted to make something engaging, suspenseful, and emotional, with some moments of humor as well."

And yet, McDonald says he is leaning away from the style of disaster movies of the 1970s. "We have been thinking more of '70s noir paranoid thriller movies. This turns out not to be a natural disaster, but one brought on by terrorists. So we're playing with the idea of fear being manufactured - what America is so possessed by now," he says. "The story becomes more about the evil that comes from within, rather than from people with accents from faraway lands."

Editor Denis Papillon (Histoire de famille) gave him the musical scores from '70s disaster flicks The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake and The Towering Inferno, all composed by John Williams, to listen to. "There's a dramatic mood that's there in those scores," says McDonald. "Sometimes music can give you a place to start from, to set the mood with what you want to do.

The shoot arrives at a busy time for McDonald. He's also in post-production on The Tracey Fragments, his $500,000 labor of love that stars Ellen Page (Hard Candy, X-Men: The Last Stand). Meanwhile, he's continuing to try to raise money for the animated film adaptation of Yummy Fur, the celebrated graphic novel by Chester Brown. "Don McKellar and John Frizzell have written the script. Now it's just a matter of getting the money together," says McDonald.

Back at Muse, the $24-million, four-hour Flood - to be seen on CBC - is in post after 13 weeks of shooting in South Africa and the U.K. This time, a tidal wave hits London.

Flood is produced by U.K.-based Power's Justin Bodle and independent producer Peter McAleese, and coproduced by Prupas at Muse and Philip Key and Genevieve Hofmeyr of South Africa's Moonlighting Films.