Breakthrough Entertainment released yesterday a trailer for its second Anne movie, entitled L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables: The Good Stars, which will premiere on YTV on 20 February 2017.
According to a press release published yesterday, the third telefilm, L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables: Fire and Dew, will premiere on YTV on 1 July 2017.
The Hollywood Reporter announced yesterday that PBS has acquired U.S. broadcasting rights to Breakthrough Entertainment’s recent telefilm L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, featuring Ella Ballentine in the title role, with plans to broadcast the movie on Thanksgiving Day, 24 November 2016.
UPDATE: Breakthrough Entertainment also announced on Twitter over the weekend that the movie is set for theatrical release in Australia and New Zealand!
L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables in Australian cinemas June 9 opens in New Zealand July 7th: https://t.co/J6XHM1syJq @ellaballentine
— Breakthrough (@breakthru_ent) June 11, 2016
Breakthrough Entertainment’s new telefilm L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, which airs tonight on YTV, has received a tremendous amount of coverage in the press. Here are a few highlights:
Have I missed anything? Let me know!
Plans to broadcast the movie outside Canada or to release it on DVD have not yet been announced.
UPDATE: “Young Actress ‘Excited’ to Play Anne of Green Gables in New TV Movie” (CBC News)
A press release circulated on CNW: A PR Newswire Company confirms that the world premiere of Breakthrough Entertainment’s telefilm L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables will be on YTV on Monday, 15 February 2016 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM EST. Also published today is a slightly extended trailer for the telefilm, which stars Ella Ballentine as Anne, Sara Botsford as Marilla, and Martin Sheen as Matthew.
Video: L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables premiering Monday, February 15 at 6 p.m. ET/PT on YTV.
An article in the Charlottetown Guardian announced today that Breakthrough Entertainment’s telefilm L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables will premiere on the YTV network in Canada on 15 February 2015, to coincide with Islander Day in Prince Edward Island. No news yet on broadcast details outside Canada or plans for a DVD release.
This news coincides with the announcement that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has ordered an eight-episode series based on Anne of Green Gables from writer/producer Moira Walley-Beckett—an announcement that has prompted a wide range of responses from commentators. Also published today is an interview with Miranda de Pencier, who is one of Walley-Beckett’s collaborators on the project and who played Josie Pye in three Anne of Green Gables television miniseries from Sullivan Entertainment: in her view, given how highly popular remakes are in Britain, there is definitely room for an ongoing Anne of Green Gables series alongside existing adaptations of the book for stage and screen: “They can all exist alongside one another.”
To see the trailer for Breakthrough’s highly anticipated telefilm, visit the website for Breakthrough Entertainment.
Today, on what would have been L.M. Montgomery’s 141st birthday (she was born on 30 November 1874), I would like to share with you an extract from a journal entry dated exactly 101 years ago, on the occasion of Montgomery’s fortieth birthday:
Once I thought forty must be the end of everything. But it isn’t! I don’t feel any older today than yesterday—when I was only 39! Or the day before yesterday when I was—19! Thank God we don’t feel old. Life is much richer, fuller, happier, more comfortable for me now than it was when I was twenty. I have won the success I resolved to win twenty years ago. It is worth the struggle—but I would not wish to be twenty again with the struggle still before me.
Montgomery is trending on the Internet as I write this, due in large part to several Google Doodles paying tribute to Anne of Green Gables. And as Melanie J. Fishbane has pointed out in a blog post published earlier this afternoon, this is an exciting time for Montgomery and especially for Anne, thanks to the upcoming new telefilm version of Anne of Green Gables, a shout-out about the novel in a recent episode of The Simpsons, and numerous celebrity mentions. A list of “Five Fast Facts You Need to Know” about Montgomery was also published today, on the website Heavy, and mentions her rediscovered final book, The Blythes Are Quoted.
I’m glad, because all this media attention reflects the continued relevance and the persistent quality of Montgomery’s writing, not only as works of literature but also as the basis for an enduring popular culture icon and a set of new Anne texts for stage and screen. I’m looking forward to delving back into the novel Anne of Green Gables next term, when I teach the book in an undergraduate children’s literature course at Wilfrid Laurier University, as an example of a crossover text that continues to appeal to both adults and children.
This movie poster for Breakthrough Entertainment’s upcoming telefilm L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables was released this week via Twitter by “Anne” herself, Ella Ballentine! No news yet on a broadcast date on YTV (or outside Canada), but the fact that it appears with the subtitle “Holiday Special” indicates that it may be released by the end of 2015.
A first trailer for Breakthrough Entertainment’s upcoming telefilm L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables has been added to its corporate website. The ninety-minute telefilm stars Ella Ballentine as Anne, Sara Botsford as Marilla, and Martin Sheen as Matthew. Stay tuned for information about its release in Canada and around the world!
A recent listing on the Internet Movie Database provides new information about some of the actors who will appear in Breakthrough Entertainment’s upcoming telefilm Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, which is scheduled to debut on YTV in Canada early in 2016. The following links are to the actors’ IMDB profiles.
Martin Sheen as Matthew Cuthbert
Linda Kash as Mrs. Barry
Sara Botsford as Marilla Cuthbert
Ella Ballentine as Anne Shirley
Julia Lalonde as Diana Barry
Zoe Fraser as Ruby Gillis
Kyle Gatehouse as Mr. Phillips
Stefani Kimber as Josie Pye
Drew Haytaoglu Gilbert Blythe
Kate Hennig as Rachel Lynde
Isabella Ricker as Prissy Andrews
More information will be posted about this production as soon as it is released, so subscribe to the blog to get all the details!
Major news has been released concerning Breakthrough Entertainment’s upcoming movie Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. According to a press release dated today, the production will air on Corus Entertainment–owned YTV early in 2016 and will star thirteen-year-old Ella Ballentine as Anne Shirley. More news will be posted here as it becomes available.
Ella Ballentine and Kate Macdonald Butler on the set of Breakthrough Entertainment’s upcoming movie Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. Photo by Steve Wilkie.
A few weeks ago, Toronto production company Breakthrough Entertainment added to its website a page for its upcoming adaptation of Anne of Green Gables. Initially announced as a thirteen-episode series, this ninety-minute telefilm will be directed by John Kent Harrison from a script by Susan Coyne:
Based on the globally beloved classic children’s novel that was first published in 1908 by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables is the story of a fiercely imaginative little girl who, with her irrepressible spirit, touches the lives of everyone that she meets. In particular, it is the story of Anne’s stormy relationship with the strait-laced Marilla Cuthbert who discovers through Anne a capacity for love that she never knew she had.
Details about casting, filming locations, and possible release dates are not yet available but will be posted here once they are confirmed.
Breakthrough Entertainment has issued a press release announcing plans for an all-new, thirteen-episode television series based on L.M. Montgomery’s novel Anne of Green Gables:
Leading Canadian production-distribution studio Breakthrough Entertainment and the heirs of beloved Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery have joined forces to develop and produce a 13-episode series for television based on one of Canada—and the world’s—most celebrated and eternal book series, Anne of Green Gables. Announcement of the all-new Anne of Green Gables television series was made jointly at the Banff World Media Festival by Breakthrough Entertainment principals Ira Levy and Peter Williamson, and Executive Producer Joan Lambur and Kate Macdonald Butler, granddaughter of author Lucy Maud Montgomery.
Set for production in 2013 in the Canadian Maritimes, Breakthrough Entertainment’s Anne of Green Gables will be a contemporary retelling of the famed book series while capturing author Lucy Maud Montgomery’s original vision for her characters and stories.
First published in 1908, Anne of Green Gables remains an iconic work selling more than 50 million copies worldwide. The eight classic Anne of Green Gables novels have attracted generations of readers inspired by the adventures of the spirited redhead Anne Shirley, who comes to stay at Green Gables and wins the hearts of everyone she meets.
For more on this contemporary retelling of Anne of Green Gables, see the article at The Hollywood Reporter.
Benjamin Lefebvre