Mainstay of Manitoba film industry files for receivership
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/06/2002 (8845 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Entertainment Reporter
AFTER dominating the Manitoba film industry for most of its 28-year history, local production company Credo Entertainment Corp. has filed for receivership.
The company issued a statement yesterday which said: “The management of Credo Entertainment is of the opinion that the company lacks sufficient cash reserves and future prospects to service (its) existing debt load.
“In addition, management is not confident, given the corporation’s financial condition, that it would be able to secure the necessary interim financing to move forward with future projects.”
Company president Derek Mazur was unavailable for comment. The company’s designated receiver, Bruce Caplan of BDO Dunwoody, said his company is still compiling information on how much Credo owes.
The company started out 28 years ago when filmmaker Derek Mazur joined forces with animator Brad Caslor to form Credo Group. One of their early coups was creating an ad campaign for the provincial New Democratic party in 1981 that, many believe, was instrumental in unseating the Progressive Conservative government in November of that year.
Caslor departed, but the company picked up steam through the ’80s and ’90s and it produced most of the province’s TV output. Credo gave Windtalkers star Adam Beach his first role in front of the camera in the 1986 telefilm Lost in the Barrens. And Credo was also instrumental in cracking the lucrative kid-TV series market with The Adventures of Shirley Holmes.
With the made-for-cable black comedy Heads, Credo was the first company to import marketable Hollywood stars to Winnipeg. The 1994 film featured Ed Asner, Jon Cryer and future Oscar nominee Jennifer Tilly.
Ironically, it was a disaster movie that may have helped lead to Credo’s collapse. Last year, the company was set to co-produce the CBS TV movie Fall from the Sky, a $7.2-million drama starring Forest Whitaker as a National Transportation Safety Board investigator attempting to uncover the truth about a super jumbo jet crash. The project was scuttled soon after the deliberate multiple crashes of Sept. 11.
In the last months, Credo had received funding from Telefilm Canada and Manitoba Film and Sound to proceed with Hockey Dreams, an adaptation of a popular book by David Adams Richards for broadcast on CBC.
That project too appears to have gone into limbo as a result of Credo’s situation.
randall.king@freepress.mb.ca