Lethbridge producer hitting his stride

Lethbridge’s Cormican getting noticed around the world

David Cormican has not had an easy time escaping his past. Of course, there are worse pasts to escape. But even as his stock rises as a young TV and film producer, the 34-yearold Lethbridge native’s roots as a thespian continue to show.

He was recently in Lithuania working with veteran Canadian producer Don Carmody on an ambitious miniseries about the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. At a production meeting, there was discussion about how to best fill a role for the Second World War-era series.

The part — which Cormican describes as “a schmaltzy emcee for a beauty pageant introducing girls in their swimsuit outfits” — was small but required certain traits, including the ability to deliver a believable American accent.

Most of the cast for the as-yet unnamed series had been brought in from either Canada or London.

But the schmaltzy emcee part was so small that it didn’t make sense to bring an actor over to play it. On the other hand, producers and casting directors couldn’t find an appropriate actor in Lithuania who fit the bill. As a producer, Cormican was among those expected to come up with a solution. Then he became the solution.

“Everyone kind of looked down the table at me,” says Cormican with a laugh. “One of our directors had worked with me previously back when I was in Saskatchewan and he was like, ‘I happen to know someone sitting at the end of the table who would be perfect for that.’ I kind of had no choice but to say, ‘All right.’ I did get to choose the name, though. I called him Charlie Cigar.”

It was a throwback to a chapter in Cormican’s past, albeit one he has largely moved away from in recent years. At one time, he assumed acting was his future. He took musical theatre at what is now MacEwan University in Edmonton, studied Irish theatre in Ireland and toured with Alberta Opera in the early 2000s.

But other than relenting to the odd cameo — a practice he shares with Carmody — the former Catholic Central High School student is concentrating on being behindthe-scenes and on the ground floor of creating new film and TV projects. He is developing a number of them right now for Don Carmody Television, which he co-founded, and is enjoying success as one of the producers of Between, a coproduction with Netflix that tells the trippy teen-drama/sci-fi tale of a small town coping with a disease that wiped out everybody over the age of 21.

Producing is a job he loves and one he seems to have taken to in relatively short order.

Hollywood Reporter recently included him in its Next Generation Canada: Class of 2014 and Playback Magazine named him “Top 10 to Watch in 2012.”

It was after his stint studying in Ireland that he went to the Big Apple and quickly discovered that film and TV, which he had looked down his nose on as a theatre student, most intrigued him.

“I finally dipped my toes into the dark side of film and television in New York and took a course at the New York Film Academy and became completely enamoured with this medium,” he said.

“I couldn’t get enough. I had a couple of offers after my student visas ran out of marriage from some of my classmates who said ‘I’ll marry you for a green card.’ But being raised a staunch Irish Catholic, I naively thought you got married for love, not a green card. I declined those offers and decided if I couldn’t move and stay in New York, I would move to the next best thing.”

That meant moving to Toronto, where he spent a few frustrating years pounding the pavement as an actor.

He didn’t like the sort of roles he was auditioning for so eventually began to write his own. That led to the realization that, more than anything, writers need producers. So he became a producer, at first working on modest short films and corporate videos in Toronto.

He eventually headed back west, taking a job as VP of Development for Regina-based Minds Eye Entertainment, where he co-produced films such as The Tall Man with Jessica Biel and 13 Eerie with Katharine Isabelle.

The latter film was co-produced by Carmody, a veteran who has produced everything from Porky’s to The Boondocks Saints to 2002 Oscar-winning musical Chicago.

When the Saskatchewan film incentive program collapsed, Cormican moved back to Toronto and eventually co-founded Don Carmody Television.

One of the new company’s first moves was to approach Canadian director Michael McGowan (Saint Ralph, One Week) about developing a TV series, which led to Between.

“We were looking for serialized content because we like long-running stories,” Cormican says. “That kind of programming is what I gravitate toward myself. Between started to check all these boxes. It was a world that we hadn’t really seen before on television. We always thought it was a bit like the Walking Dead without the zombies and a little more grounded in reality. This is something that could actually happen. A quarantine could hit and what would you do if just the kids were left inside that zone?”

Between, which runs on Citytv in Canada and streams on Netflix everywhere

We always thought (Between) was a bit like the Walking Dead without the zombies and a little more grounded in reality.

else, is in the midst of its second season. A third has yet to be ordered by Rogers and Netflix, but Cormican is optimistic, given the show’s passionate fan base.

It’s just one of many projects Cormican is developing with Don Carmody Television. There is the aforementioned Second World War miniseries. He is also working on a fact-based limited series about the mafia, conceived by John A. Gotti and based on power struggles between New York and Canadian mobsters in the 1950s and 1960s.

The company has also optioned Medicine Hat writer Mark Sakamoto’s memoir Forgiveness, which tells the intertwining stories of Sakamoto’s grandparents during the war years.

And, going full circle, Cormican says he is also working on adapting one of the company’s other properties — he can’t say which one — as a stage musical.

Speaking of full circle, Cormican was named MacEwan University’s 2016 Distinguished Alumnus this month, just the latest honour he has received for his rising-star status in Canadian film and television.

Nice as the acknowledgments are, Cormican says he spends most of his time looking to the future.

“There’s so much more I want to do and I don’t think I have accomplished all that much,” he says. “Maybe that’s a sign that I’m too hard on myself and need to slow down a little bit and take stock of the accomplishments. But, I mean, we’ve got some pretty big projects we’re developing at the moment.”

Between airs Thursdays on Citytv. The season finale airs Aug. 4.