TSG aims at TV prod'n via 3 deals

Sinofsky, Raucher, Sovenir pacts to increase small screen presence

By JOHN DEMPSEY

Shooting Gallery's TV division is laying the groundwork for the production of series, made-fors and documentary programming.

The company has engineered three specific moves to further these goals:

• Hired documentary filmmaker Bruce Sinofsky ("Paradise Lost," "Brother's Keeper") to help develop reality series and one-shot docus. He'll work as director on some projects and as executive producer on others.

• Signed a deal with Jennifer Raucher, who has resigned as director of development for Barwood Films to become VP of TV program development at S.G. She'll work with Josh Kane, prexy of Shooting Gallery's TV operation, to come up with sitcoms, one-hour dramas and TV movies.

• Engineered a first-look deal with Souvenir Entertainment, a New York-based management/production company run by Lee Kappelman and John Dionysios Keveanos. Souvenir has TV projects in the works with Laura Dern, Richard Dreyfuss, Diane Keaton and Paul Reiser.

"We're planning to get a project or two off the ground this year and get them on the air next year," chairman and CEO Larry Meistrich said.

Flexible deals

Meistrich says S.G. will be flexible in making deals with broadcast and cable networks. Fox example, the broadcast nets typically insist on getting ownership of a big percentage of the series and movies they schedule. To engineer a series deal on one of the broadcast networks, "we'd be comfortable signing on as producers for hire," he said.

Conversely, for a documentary on one of the cable nets, S.G. might own the negative, renting the docu to the network for a specific period of time.

Novelist John Saul is under contract to develop a drama series for Shooting Gallery, which also has the rights to adapt Saul's novels as TV movies.

S.G., a privately held company, is cushioned from any losses in the production of TV programs by its ownership of an array of production facilities in New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto and Miami, encompassing a combined 500,000 square feet. "Every major feature film and TV show in New York," Meistrich said, "has used some part of our facilities."