MOONFLEET SETS SAIL

Recording started tonight on our new production, MOONFLEET. A great session, and some really cool performances. VERY happy with our young star, Rob Cattell, who is doing a fantastic job as John Trenchard. Tom Berry co-stars in a fun character role, and the cast tonight was rounded out by CRT vets Cynthia Pape, Lincoln Clark, and Marcia Friedman. This one records thru April 14th, and we hope to have it on the air in July.

Horton Hears Ca-Ching!

CONGRATS to our friends and Dibble Show TV production Partners Ricardo Curtis, Wesley Lui, and the incredible team at HOUSE OF COOL in Toronto for the stunning weekend opening of HORTON HEARS A WHO! You got the #1 movie in the country, guys, and I wish I was in TOR for a celebration drink! HoC did the 2D animation for the picture, and Ricardo was Head of Story!

HALLOWEEN TREE TRAILER

Be sure to check out the trailer for our upcoming release THE HALLOWEEN TREE, by Ray Bradbury! You can find it on the home page of the Colonial Radio site (www.colonialradio.com). Turned out pretty good, I think!

POWDER RIVER

For the next week you can hear POWDER RIVER - ON THE TRAIL OF THE BIG HORN in a stream on Jim French's IMAGINATION THEATER. This program actually contains two episodes from the series, "The General" and "On The Trail of the Big Horn."

Next month it will be one year since we went on the air with IMAGINATION THEATRE, and every month we get the same six people or so who leave comments like "This show sucks," "It's the worst thing on the air," "The writing is childish - in fact, my nine year old can write better," and "please, please, make this show go away!"

But then we get thirty or more votes and comments monthly from people who like the show, so that's more like it!

Updates

Well, we are finished with THE HALLOWEEN TREE. Ray should have his copy of the finished production by now, and I hope he likes what we have done with his incredible story. In my opinion, it's the HALLOWEEN version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. You should get the book and give it a read - it's wonderful. Our program should be released in the fall.

Now that our job is finished on that one, it's time to focus on KING SOLOMON'S MINES, which is being post produced by Byron Lee. It's due at the end of the month, and what I've heard so far sounds pretty good. The episodes are a little on the long side, so they will have to be re-cut to fit our XM time slot - no, that doesnt mean leaving things on the editing room floor; it means that part of the original episode 1 will now be part of episode 2, and so on and so on. No biggy, we've done it before. I'll say this much, it sure does sound like we recorded it in the jungle!

I hope to have the cast set for MOONFLEET by the end of the upcoming week, as I want to start recording ASAP.

HALLOWEEN TREE - UPCOMING TRAILER

We are in the final hours of editing for Ray Bradbury's THE HALLOWEEN TREE - finally! It will be finished in the wee hours of the morning.

This production was recorded on Dec.2, 2006, and then put on hold until we upgraded our music department. I knew this show needed the very best music we could get, and I decided to wait until we had it. The following summer, of 2007, the music was ready to go, and Jeff started to work on the score. On Jan. 16th, Chris Snyder started post production. Recording for re-takes also took place on Jan. 27 and 28, 2008, Feb.16, and March 3, 2008.

We have 8 very talented (and I DO mean talented) youngsters in this cast; Matthew Scott Robertson, Anastas Varinos (our two stars of SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES), Connor Doherty (from GUNS OF POWDER RIVER), Curtis Brauner, Dan Duran, James McLean (POWDER RIVER), Jacob Rosenbaum, and Rob Cattell. These guys poured their hearts out for this production, and it shows.

Two of these young performers have some pretty good gigs going on at the moment! Matthew is about to embark on an eight month tour of Asia in THE SOUND OF MUSIC, while Jacob Rosenbaum is doing some Shakespeare in NYC as the young Macduff to Patrick Stewarts Macbeth!

J.T. Turner narrates the story. In fact, it was J.T. who first mentioned THE HALLOWEEN TREE, back when we were starting work on DANDELION WINE. If it wasn't for him, I probably would not have thought about doing it!

Although the show won't be released until September or October, we are going to be posting a trailer at the CRT website, so you can get a sneak peek! Look for it towards the end of the week, or early next.

COLONIALS FIRST PODCAST

I'm very grateful to Jack Ward and Shannon Hilchie for putting together the first monthly podcast of feature CRT productions! This month it's 2 episodes of POWDER RIVER; "The New Owner," and "The Moment of Truth (containing radios biggest saloon fight)"

This months interview is with POWDER RIVER's producer, Chris Snyder. To hear it, simply go to SONIC SOCIETY and click on "sonic society podcast" in the upper left corner.

It is also available on many podcast sites. Let us know what you think!

OUT OF AFRICA

Tonight we wrapped on KING SOLOMON'S MINES, and the CRT microphones have left Africa for now. I am very happy the way the vocal recordings turned out, and if the completed first episode is any indication, this could be one exciting show! Editing is on schedule, and so is the music scoring. Plans for a May release are still on green light!
Many thanks to a great cast, and a great post production team!

MOONFLEET GOES INTO PRODUCTION

Now that KING SOLOMON'S MINES is wrapping up recording, we are gearing up for our next production, MOONFLEET. Set in the fishing village of Moonfleet during the mid 18th century, the story concerns a 15 year old orphan boy, John Trenchard, who becomes friends with an older man who turns out to be the leader of a gang of smugglers.

It's an exciting adventure in 10 episodes that we plan on airing on XM in June or July. Deniz Cordell dramatized the novel by J. Meade Falkner. The book was extremely popular among children worldwide up until the1970s, mostly for its themes of adventure and gripping storyline. In recent years it has fallen from popularity, possibly because parents thought that smuggling and other immoral activity should not be encouraged. As always, we will tell the story as it was written in 1888. We have not assigned a producer yet, and we are just now starting to line up the large cast. More details later!

FATHER BROWN / THE WIZARD OF OZ

Our FATHER BROWN MYSTERIES will be released in a 4-CD set this April from Blackstone Audio! J.T. Turner stars as Father Brown in this series that has quickly become one of our most popular downloads. 8 episodes are included in this set, titled "Vol.1." Eight more episodes are in production.

This summer, Blackstone will release our WIZARD OF OZ stories! We have produced five in all (a sixth remains unreleased), and this will be the first time they are available on CD! In 2000 we won the Parents Choice Award for these productions in their original release on audio cassette.
THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ
THE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ
OZMA OF OZ
DOROTHY AND THE WIZARD IN OZ
THE ROAD TO OZ

Both these releases will have brand new cover art from the amazing design team at Blackstone. What you see here is the cover art for the downloads.