Shot-in-Manitoba films ready to screen, stream

This has been a big year for film and TV shot in Winnipeg, with fare such as the comedic gangster film Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice topping the streaming charts when it debuted in March on Hulu/Disney+, with more than 300 million views worldwide.

Smaller indie films, such as Johnny Ma’s The Mother and the Bear, and James McLellan and Alexandre (Sasha) Trudeau’s dramatic feature Hair of the Bear also got long-awaited screen time in the first quarter of the year, as did Rhayne Vermette’s experimental feature Levers.

After the Bob Odenkirk thriller Normal becomes available Tuesday, expect more locally shot fare to come to cinemas, or your TV screen, in the months ahead.

 

The reboot series Little House on the Prairie premières on Netflix July 9, with Aussie actor Luke Bracey starring in the Michael Landon role of pioneer Charles Ingalls, with Alice Halsey as Laura Ingalls, the young heroine of the story. Both the books and the original series were based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s childhood in the American Midwest in the 1800s. (The books were published during the Great Depression.)

Though still unreleased, the series must have impressed Netflix’s front office: the streamer has already ordered a second season, which is shooting now through to the end of October.

“I’m incredibly grateful to our wonderful cast and crew, who put their hearts and hard work into making our first season come alive,” showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine said in a press release. “We can’t wait to share this new adaptation of the Little House books with the world, and we’re thrilled that Netflix is giving us the opportunity to continue the story.”

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John Travolta had Winnipeggers buzzing when he landed in town last summer to star in a movie that promised to rip the lid off the Kennedy assassination.

The North American rights to director Roland Joffee’s November 1963 were recently acquired by Ketchup Entertainment, and the film is set to be released in the final quarter of the year, presumably in November, befitting the title.

Nicki Celozzi, nephew of infamous mobster Sam Giancana, wrote the script and produced the film along with Saskatchewan-based producer Kevin Dewalt of Minds Eye Entertainment. Bonnie Giancana, daughter of Sam Giancana, was also attached as an executive producer.

Celozzi’s story came from the lips of his uncle Pepe Giancana, who was with his brother Sam during the events depicted.

Travolta plays Johnny Roselli, the Outfit’s man on the West Coast and in Vegas. Mandy Patinkin (Homeland) stars as Anthony Accardo, the powerful head of the Chicago Outfit. Dermot Mulroney (Chicago Fire) plays Chuckie Nicoletti, Sam Giancana’s bodyguard, and Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting) plays Jack Ruby, the organized crime-adjacent club owner who would publicly kill Oswald.

Ketchup Entertainment plans a minimum 1,000-screen North American release, but there is no word on whether Canada, or Winnipeg, will be in that number.

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American Hostage, an eight-episode miniseries starring Jon Hamm and Giovanni Ribisi, will be streaming this fall on MGM+.

Hamm plays Fred Heckman, a beloved Indianapolis radio reporter who finds himself in the role of a negotiator when a hostage-taker (Ribisi) demands to be interviewed for his popular news program.

The series, which also stars The Good Place’s William Jackson Harper and The Killing’s Mireille Enos, is based on the real events covered in a podcast of the same name.

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All we want this Christmas is Violent Night 2, the sequel to the Universal Studios hit, in which David Harbour (Stranger Things) returns as an ass-kicking Santa.

Harbour is joined by Nobody Wants This star Kristen Bell as Mrs. Claus and an impressive supporting cast including Joe Pantoliano (The Matrix), Jared Harris (Chernobyl), Daniela Melchior (The Suicide Squad) and pro wrestler Maxwell Jacob Friedman.

Unlike the first film, which was shot in the depths of an extremely cold winter, the sequel was filmed in September and October of last year. Evidently, the deep winter months drew too many complaints the first time.

“Where I’m from is above the Arctic Circle,” the Norway-born Wirkola told the Free Press in 2022. “The temperatures are about the same in the winter. But Winnipeg has that annoying wind which makes it so much colder.”

Violent Night 2 will open Dec. 4.

 

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