Producer Marlo Miazga Launches M Media With CBC-Commissioned Documentary About Her Son's Death
Canadian producer Marlo Miazga is launching a new production company, M Media, with a deeply personal first project: a documentary for CBC about her teenage son's death by suicide.
M Media will operate out of Toronto as an IP-focused media business producing both scripted and unscripted content, according to Deadline. The company's debut commission, Ground Control, is a feature documentary developed alongside a memoir Miazga is writing for Random House Canada titled Ground Control: Losing My Child to Suicide, co-written with journalist Katrina Onstad.
Miazga's son, Mars, was 14 when he died by suicide in 2020, following less than a year of visible mental health struggle. The memoir is set for official launch on January 26, 2027, with the documentary delivering the following spring. Production begins in October.
CBC has greenlit the documentary. Chase Joynt is directing, with Greg Beer and Katrina Onstad credited as writers. Miazga serves as executive producer alongside Catalyst founder Julie Bristow and Ryan Dias.
Financing is in place from several of Canada's principal public funding bodies: Telefilm Canada's Theatrical Documentary Program, the Canada Media Fund's POV program, and the Rogers Documentary Fund. The film will have a theatrical run in Canada handled by Eyesteel Films, with worldwide rights being shopped to international buyers.
Miazga left Sphere Media in July 2025, where she had been President and executive producer of the company's Unscripted and Kids & Family divisions. Her career before that included co-founding NewroadMedia in 2011 with CBC executive Ann Marie Redred, and an earlier stint working with Julie Bristow at Bristow Global Media — a company later sold to Kew Media and absorbed into Sphere.
What gives M Media's launch its weight is that the first project is not a format pitch or a scripted pilot. It is a producer turning the camera on her own family's loss, with a public broadcaster's backing and a book deal running in parallel. The structure — memoir first, documentary after — means the film arrives into a conversation the book has already started.
For the Canadian production sector, M Media adds another woman-led independent to a market where scaled unscripted producers have consolidated heavily in recent years. Miazga's Sphere pedigree and her access to federal and provincial production funds give the company a running start on financing, which is often the hardest barrier for a new label. Whether M Media builds beyond Ground Control into a broader scripted and unscripted slate will depend on what commissions follow.
