Temple Street Productions
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Temple Street Productions is an established, privately held production and distribution company based in Toronto, Canada. The company's original owners were Patrick Whitley, President, and Sheila Hockin, Vice President. Temple Street is the producer of Emmy and WGA award-winning cable features and prime time series; among its recent productions was the highly successful US television series Queer as Folk. The series was a joint venture with Showtime Networks and Warner Brothers, and was produced at Dufferin Gate Studios, owned by Temple Street's sister company Dufferin Gate Productions, in Toronto from 2000 to 2005.
Temple Street Entertainment, a division headed by Ivan Schneeberg and David Fortier, was launched to pursue international producing partnerships and to develop and produce original film and television projects. Schneeberg and Fortier joined Temple Street from their law practices at Goodmans LLP, Canada's leading entertainment law firm, where they represented major U.S., Canadian and European studios, independent producers, distributors, broadcasters, cable companies, talent agencies, directors, actors and writers and advised clients on all aspects of film and television financing, production and distribution.
Temple Street expanded into documentary and factual entertainment with the addition in 2002 of a division headed by David Yark, an Emmy award winning producer with an extensive record in the film and television business that includes feature drama, IMAX, documentary and factual entertainment programming. "Blueprint for Disaster" a series of doc -ish programmes that recreate events using animation, live action and voice-over was well received around the world. Toronto based Voice Artist Adrian Bell provided the narration for the original series. The division is in production on Blueprint for Disaster II, the second season of a series mixing documentary, recreation and CGI to tell the story of the scientific investigations of major engineering disasters.
During the summer of 2006, Temple Street Productions was sold to Schneeberg and Fortier by the original owners. Patrick Whitley was retained as Chairman of Temple Street Productions while Sheila Hockin left the company but has been retained as a consultant for the company's role in the production of Canada's Next Top Model which it co-producers with CHUM Television and CBS Paramount Network Television.
In October 2006, Temple Street Productions severed its corporate relationship with its sister company Dufferin Gate Productions and moved its headquarters out of Dufferin Gate Studios to downtown Toronto.