Geek Girl Studio Waterside Teams With Creatives Behind Reginald The Vampire, The Way Home & Orphan Black As Part Of Scripted Slate

EXCLUSIVE: Canada’s Waterside Studios is developing scripted projects with an array of North American writing and production talent.

The Corus Entertainment-owned studio is currently focusing on procedurals, half-hour comedies and young adult content after launching last year. On the back of its debut teen series Geek Girl going into production for Netflix and Corus, Head of Waterside Jeff Norton revealed a trio of titles developed with the likes of writer-producers Todd Berger and Julie DiCresce, Arnie Zipursky and Jeff Detsky.

On the procedural front is Serve & Protect, a drama series co-produced with Berger and DiCresce’s LA-based December Films, which is best known for Syfy horror comedy Reginald the Vampire. Canadian novelist and screenwriter Zoe Whittall is attached to the project, which Norton billed as having “the ensemble cast of NCIS with the quick wit of Private Eyes.”

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The series follows a former big city federal officer who returns to her hometown to ride a cop car with her high-school boyfriend. “It’s a blue sky procedural that asks if you can ever really go home,” added Norton.

Michigan Vs the Boys is a young adult drama adapted from a book of the same name from Carrie S. Allen. Noelle Carbone (Cardinal) and Brendan Yorke (Wyonna Earp) are writing and Zipusky’s Neshama Entertainment, producer of Hallmark Channel drama series The Way Home and various TV movies, is attached alongside Waterside. It follows Michigan Manning, a hockey player who joins a boys hockey team after the town’s girls team shuts down over budget cuts only to face hazing that crosses the line into assault. By speaking up, she could jeopardize her future.

“It’s a timely prime-time drama, akin to Friday Night Lights, as the Hockey Canada assault story broke last year, though the story isn’t ripped from the headlines,” said Norton. The case saw a women paid a settlement fee over allegations she was the victim of a sexual assault by members of the Canadian men’s national junior hockey team.

Half-hour comedy-drama Action Figures is being made with The Beaverton and Orphan Black co-creator Jeff Detsky and follows a newly-separated, grown-up man-child who finds one of his collection of toy figurines is ‘possessed’ and is unsure if it’s real or in his head. Norton said the cringe comedy has shades of Catastrophe with a tone closer to FX comedy What We Do in the Shadows. “It’s similar to Schitts Creek and Letterkenny in that it’s high concept but at a scale buyers are used to from a Canadian show. We’ve taken to calling it ‘the adult Toy Story.”

When Norton joined Waterside, the agreement came with the option of several projects from Norton’s label Dominion of Drama, including Action Figures. Others included The Last Wish of Sasha Cade, Elements at War, The Wanderer and A Switch in Time.

‘Geek Girl’ comes together

Waterside’s debut show is Geek Girl, about a gawky, neurodivergent teenager who is plucked from obscurity to embark on a modeling career. We first told you about the project in January. Production began last week with Emily Carey (House of the Dragon) leading a cast also including Sarah Parish (Industry, Stay Close), Emmanuel Imani (Riches, The Wheel Of Time), Liam Woodrum (Love In Zion National), Zac Looker (A Kind of Spark), Tim Downie (Outlander, Paddington), Jemima Rooper (Flowers in the Attic: The Origin), Daisy Jelley (London Kills) and newcomer Rochelle Harrington.

Waterside is making the show in UK with co-producers RubyRock Pictures and Aircraft Pictures, the latter of which Norton helped Canadian network and production giant Corus acquired in 2022. The final two episodes will film in Canada, allowing for the series to benefit from the country’s tax rebate system.

“For the last decade it’s been my dream to see Geek Girl brought to life on screen,” said Holly Smale, author of the Geek Girl book series.

Waterside first attached production partners before bringing on Netflix as worldwide distributor. Norton then took the project to Corus, which joined and will play the show on kids channel YTV. “The company is not a physical producer,” he told Deadline. “This allows us to spend the bulk of our time focusing on development and funding — trying to stay above the line and focus on stories that will move the needle.

“People can also think Waterside is just making shows for Corus networks, but the model is I need to find an anchor buyer outside of Canada. If I do that, I can return to Corus and sell them a great. In this case, Netflix loved the sound, tone and energy of the property and wanted a script. Only once we had one and they were good to go did I bring it back to Corus.”

Author and producer Norton continues to run his Dominion of Drama label, though he is now full-time at Waterside, which is based at Corus’ Toronto headquarters. He previously ran Awesome Media & Entertainment, which was part Kew Media until the latter collapsed financially in 2020.

Waterside was launched as a premium IP production and development venture aimed at making premium scripted Canadian content for youth and primetime audiences to the Canadian and international marketplace. It also works with Corus label Nelvana to create live-action kids programming. 

“There has been a bubble over the past few years with money pouring in from the streamers, mostly fuelled by the cheap cost of capital, institutional money and pension fund investment,” said Norton. “Now the music has stopped, buyers are coming back to earth but in a healthy way. There is still an appetite because audiences want new shows.

“A lot of producers just think about getting a show made, but I’ve always been trained to think about who a show is for. My conversations with buyers is often about audiences. When you work backwards from that point, you can have sensible conversations about genre and trends, and how we can delight and surprise audiences at the right budget.”

Canada is going through seismic market changes at the moment as the C-11 bill (or the Online Streaming Act) comes into effect. The modernized broadcasting bill gives regulator Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) authority to regulate the likes of Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube platforms, bringing them more in line with traditional TV network rules.

Among the new rules, streamers will be forced to spend a significant amount of local revenues on Canadian content. The streamers are believed to be watching closely about what the definition of ‘Canadian content’ is — whether this means shows that distinctly Canadian in tone or just programs and films made int he country.

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