It looks like Robin Williams will soon be motoring it to Calgary.

The comic actor of Good, Morning Vietnam and Good Will Hunting fame has signed to star in the big-budget comedy R.V., which is expected to shoot in the Calgary region this summer, the Sun has learned.

Williams will play a workaholic dad who loads his family into an R.V. on a road trip, hoping they won't realize he is really going to attend a business meeting.

Along the way, they're confronted by an oddball collection of campers.

Calgary and area would double for the Colorado Rockies.

Plans call for the production to begin in Vancouver in May and then move for three or four weeks to southern Alberta, possibly Lethbridge, say Sun sources.

Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm) will play Williams' wife in the movie, which is being directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black).

Williams is no stranger to the area. For the past two years, he's dropped in for the Fairmont Banff Springs Sports Invitational in support of Robert F. Kennedy's Waterkeeper Alliance.

INDUSTRY PICKING UP STEAM

R.V. is one of several projects expected to hang a shingle here in the coming months -- a marked turnaround for Calgary's film community, which has struggled this year.

"After a very slow start, things are picking up now," says Damian Petti, president of IATSE, the union that represents Calgary film technicians and stage hands.

"We sort of saw (the downturn) coming. The spike in the Canadian dollar, when it was higher than 80 cents -- we knew there would be an impact. Now it's stabilized a bit.

"There will always be a certain demand for features and westerns in this area because of our diverse location, but we're competing globally with places like Romania and states in the U.S. like New Mexico. It's become a global market.

"It's also to do with incentives. A number of states in the U.S. are offering incentives as well as Canadian provinces. In Alberta we have a film fund and we're hoping the government will continue to work with us on that.

"There is a fair volume of projects currently scouting and I'm optimistic that by May we should be busy.

"At this point, there are no television series planned, but it will be a mix of movies for television and feature films."

Among them will be as-yet-unconfirmed projects from Calgary-based Voice Pictures and Nomadic Pictures, each of which is currently enjoying success on U.S. television.

Nomadic is responsible -- speaking of Williams -- for the biographical Behind The Scenes: Mork & Mindy that aired last night on NBC.

Voice --which in the past has worked on Hollywood Wives and the Steven Spielberg western mini-series Into The West -- co-produced the Little House on the Prairie mini-series airing Saturdays on ABC's The Wonderful World of Disney. It debuted last month to more than nine million viewers -- the highest viewership for that timeslot in two years.

Despite the ratings, though, executive producer Wendy Hill-Tout says there are no plans to make more movies adapted from the classic series of frontier stories that formed the basis of the Michael Landon 1970s drama.

"No one's talked about doing more. I don't know. It's not like it's a burning issue," says Hill-Tout, who is clearly pleased with the result.

"Oh yeah, I think it's lovely. I love the casting -- they're all so natural. They're likable characters and really believable and I think Alberta was beautiful in it. The cinematography was stunning.

"The (director of photography) who was from Alberta did a great job. It's such a high quality family film and we need more films like them. I hope we do more -- they were beautifully done."

Definitely not returning to Alberta is Into The West, which was expected back after picking up stakes to shoot in New Mexico.

"It was because of the cold and snow," Hill-Tout says. "There was very little weather cover in the scripts. It was all outdoors. So they went to New Mexico and then once they were there, it wasn't cost effective for them to come back."

Already shooting in the city is Six Figures, an independent feature starring J.R. Bourne (Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning) and Caroline Cave (The War Bride, Almost America).

Industry watchers are also waiting word from the filmmakers of an untitled western about Jesse James that is set to star Brad Pitt.

Producers have scouted southern Alberta for a possible fall/winter shoot.