Bicoastal prodco hungry man is tackling the north coast with the opening of Toronto-based frozen man.

The idea for the new, stand-alone company came about during 2000's summer of SAG. "We spent so much time up there working in Toronto, but kind of lost our identity," says hungry man exec producer Steve Orent. "We worked with Avion and Radke and loved them both, but on the slate it read Avion, not hungry man. We love shooting there and we like to do things a little differently. There aren't many American companies with a company in Toronto, so we thought, why not do it."

Orent says frozen man will enable US jobs produced in Toronto to maintain the distinctive, hungry man identity. Initially, frozen man will furnish production services for hungry man jobs (a shoot is already underway for TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York). However, Orent says that's only the beginning: "Ultimately we'll open a full office, but we're easing into it. I hope we're accepted. We have no offices yet and we're about to run our second job."

Producer Tom Rossano is currently overseeing frozen man shoots. A new exec producer and other personnel will be drawn from the Canadian production community -- that is, no US transplants.

"Currently Radke and Avion are repping our directors. We'll open a small office, keep it small and take the sales into frozen man," says Orent. "I'm curious to see what the response is and play it from there."

The hungry and soon-to-be-frozen men are: Bryan Buckley, Hank Perlman, John O'Hagan, David Shane, Stacy Wall, Paul Norling, Bennett Miller, David Levin, Jim Jenkins, Marcos Siega, Marc Klasfeld, Young Kim, Mark Foster and Marty Canellakis.

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