proof the industry is changing
Screen Australia has injected almost $17 million into a diverse slate of feature films and TV that is expected to trigger almost $100 million in production.
Feature films receiving funding include: The Grandmothers, The Mule, Patrick and These Final Hours, which involve filmmakers Leigh Whannel, Robert Connolly, Antony I. Ginnane and Paul Currie.
Erotic tale The Grandmothers, produced by Andrew Mason among many others, is based on a story by Doris Lessing about two lifelong friends who fall in love with each other’s teenage sons. Its strong cast includes Naomi Watts, Xavier Samuel, Robin Wright and James Frecheville.
Saw’s Leigh Whannell is back in Australia with a new film which he writes, stars in and co-produces: The Mule. The black comedy, which is also written and produced by Angus Sampson, tells the story of unlikely drug mule Ray Jenkins, from Victoria, who takes on all the authority figures in his life using the only option within his control – holding on.
As reported earlier by IF, Patrick is a re-imagining of the 1970s chiller, while These Final Hours will be written/directed and produced by Zak Hilditch and Liz Kearney respectively.
Other features include The Pappas Brothers and high-concept psychological thriller 2.22, which is set in New York City.
“The high-concept thriller 2:22 is a type of film that rarely gets presented to Screen Australia and will be an international career-launcher for Australian director Paul Currie,” Screen Australia’s chief operating officer Fiona Cameron said in a statement.
Five adult drama investments have been made including biographical telemovie Underground. Following the early life of Julian Assange, it will be written and directed by Connolly while Helen Bowden and Tony Ayres will produce and executive produce, respectively.
Other funding for adult TV drama went to John Edwards’ World Series Cricket and Puberty Blues, as well as two-part ABC series Devil’s Dust and period drama series The Doctor Blake Mysteries.
“Adult television drama continues to move from strength to strength. This compelling mix of quality series and telemovies will continue to provide audiences with engaging and iconic Australian stories,” Cameron said.
Children’s television shows receiving funding from the national agency include Dance Academy Series 3, live-action children’s series In Your Dreams, by producer Noel Price (Seven Network), and comic animation series The Flamin’ Thongs (ABC).
FEATURES
2:22
Lightstream Pictures Pty Ltd
Producer Jackie O’Sullivan
Executive Producers Garrett Kelleher, Bruce Davey, Paul Brooks, Lawrence Inglee
Co-writer/Director/Co-producer Paul Currie
Co-writer Todd Stein
International Sales Gold Circle Films, Lionsgate International
Australian Distributor Icon Productions
Synopsis Dylan Boyd’s life as an air traffic controller is permanently derailed when an ominous pattern of events begins to permeate his life, funnelling him into Grand Central Station every day at 2.22pm. When he falls for a beautiful woman, it seems their lives were meant to intertwine long ago. With a grim fate looming, Dylan must solve the riddle of 2.22 to preserve a love that’s second chance has finally come.
THE GRANDMOTHERS
Hopscotch Features, Ciné-@, Mon Voisin Productions, Gaumont, France 2 Cinéma
Producers Andrew Mason, Philippe Carcassonne, Michel Feller, Dominique Besnehard, Francis Boespflug
Writer Christopher Hampton
Director Anne Fontaine
International Sales Gaumont
Australian Distributor Hopscotch/eOne
Synopsis Nobel Prize for Literature winner Doris Lessing’s beautiful and heart-wrenching story of two lifelong friends who fall in love with each other’s teenage sons. The Grandmothers is an erotic tale of misguided love and a celebration of the enduring nature of female friendship.
THE MULE
The Mule Development Co.
Producer Paul Clarke
Writer/Co-producers Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson
Executive Producer Bruce Kane
Director Tony Mahony
International Sales eOne
Australian Distributor Hopscotch
Synopsis Ray Jenkins, an unlikely drug mule from Sunshine, Victoria, takes on all the authority figures in his life using the only option within his control – holding on!
THE PAPPAS BROTHERS
Pank & Martin
Producers George Pank, Eddie Martin, James Gay-Rees
Executive Producers Jude Troy, Rachel Okine, Paul McGowan
Director Eddie Martin
Editor Chris King
International Sales eOne, Cinetic
Australian Distributor Hopscotch/eOne
Synopsis Blood may be thicker than water but in the case of Tas and Ben Pappas who rose from the western suburbs of Melbourne to become the #1 and #2 skateboarders in the world, it was not sufficient to prevent both brothers from falling into a drug-fuelled spiral to hell from which only one returns.
PATRICK
FG Film Productions (Australia) Pty Ltd in association with Rising Sun Pictures
Producer Antony I Ginnane
Writer Justin King
Director Mark Hartley
International Sales Bankside Films
Australian Distributor Umbrella Entertainment
Synopsis For three years Patrick has been lying mute and immobile, a patient in Dr Roget’s clinic for the comatose. Dr Roget has been discharging increasingly large doses of electricity into Patrick’s brain, hoping for a sign of brain function. When young nurse Kathy starts working at the clinic, Patrick figures out how to utilise all that pent up power with deadly effect. A reimagining of Richard Franklin’s 1970s chiller.
THESE FINAL HOURS
8th In Line Pty Ltd
Producer Liz Kearney
Executive Producer Robert Connolly
Writer/Director Zak Hilditch
International Sales Maze Film Sales, Celluloid Nightmares, XYZ
Australian Distributor Footprint Films
Synopsis A self-obsessed young man makes his way to the party-to-end-all-parties on the last day on Earth, but ends up saving the life of a little girl searching for her father. Their relationship ultimately leads him on the path to redemption.
Screen production sector needs to become manufacturer: SPAA’s Brian Rosen
Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA) president Brian Rosen has called on the industry to acknowledge that it is a manufacturer of creative content, which adds value to the economy in the same way as mining and tourism.
Rosen, opening this year’s SPAA conference in Sydney, said he was sick of hearing arguments that the local screen production sector was a cottage industry that only exists for cultural reasons. He instead called on the industry to embrace better financial models and creative processes which will boost content production, exports and create profitable businesses.
“I want us to be seen as an industry that has value in our economy, just like the mining industry or the car industry or the tourist industry,” he said.
“For us to succeed as an industry we need to start acknowledging that we are manufacturers of creative content. Each year we create thousands of hours of content, be that from current affairs, infotainment, comedy, drama, documentaries, feature films. The concept that we are manufacturers may offend our creative psyche but if we wish to lift ourselves out of the cultural ghetto that we are at times assigned to by government and patronised to by the agencies, who feel they are the Medicis of all things cultural, then we need to promulgate a position that firmly and squarely puts us in the same status as other manufacturing industries.
“We take great joy in ridiculing Hollywood as being the dream factory which sells out to the lowest common denominator for the sake of profit,. Well, at least they make a profit. But within that so-called creative sell-out is some of the best content in the world.”
His call comes as the government continues its convergence review, which is evaluating the regulations that apply to traditional media. It looms as a critical report for the future of local content.
Rosen called on the local industry to work with the free-to-air sector and pay-TV, which understand the value of local content better than telcos, and suggested that the 20 per cent Producer Offset tax rebate that applies to TV productions be doubled (which would bring it to the same level of subsidy as feature films). He also called for a lift in existing local content quotas (although broadcasters are largely arguing for a reduction).
“The industry needs to expand and the Producer Offset is the best and most efficient mechanism to manage that objective,” he said, while also calling on the Offset eligibility to be expanded to include a wider range of screen content, as well as games production.
Screen Australia is currently appealing a ruling by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal that a local documentary, Lush House, should qualify for the Producer Offset. The government agency believes that “infotainment”, such as cleaning show Lush House, should not qualify.
“That Screen Australia is trying to define through the courts what is or is not a documentary is misconceived purism – a cultural hangover I believe from the Film Australia days,” Rosen said.
“At a time when we want our content to grow exponentially this is not the time to have cultural arguments as to how worthy a documentary has to be in order to qualify for the Producer Offset. Screen Australia’s role, like the FFC before it, is as an administrator of the Producer Offset and not as an arbiter of taste and their argument that they are concerned that to broad a definition will blow out budget estimates of the Producer Offset is not what they are charged with – that should be a direct discussion between the industry and the government.”
Brendan Swift
if.com.au
There’s nothing like the Australian film and tourism industry
This ad cost 4 million taxpayer dollars. And in my opinion, it’s a great ad. Now, over a year later, Tourism Australia still hasn’t seen fit to upload it to YouTube. In HD.
For free.
You’ll have to contend with this bootleg:
Update 21/11/2011: Not anymore. I emailed Tourism Australia and they uploaded a HD version. Full credit to them for recognising a problem and fixing it. Watch it in HD.
Framerate could be higher, but you know, babysteps.
Not an Australian film, just a film.
Within hours of a bootleg version of this trailer going online, the official site responded with an official trailer. Nice work.
This will do gangbusters worldwide.
great trailer for The Cup
If handled well, it should do Red Dog business. Amazing yarn, terrific cast and underrated director.
However, when they don’t bother to debut the trailer on youtube (try searching for it) and make it hard to embed on websites, it makes you wonder if the distributors know what they’re doing. The advertisement before what essentially is an advertisement doesn’t help much either.
good buzz
Let’s hope all those fake IMDB reviews were just clever promotion. I so want to like this.
Update from The West Australian (14/8/2011):
The tail of Red Dog continues to wag with the box office up 12 per cent from its opening last week.
Movies usually have their biggest days in the first weekend then taper off in coming weeks.
But Red Dog has defied the usual downward trend at the box office, pushed along by strong reviews and enthusiastic word-of-mouth.
Roadshow Films executive Phil Oneile said it was extremely rare for a film, American or Australian, to increase its audience after opening. “I recall that The Castle went up in its second week but I can’t recall many others that have done it,” he said.
These strong early numbers suggest Red Dog will cross the magical $10 million mark that signifies a genuine Aussie blockbuster.
