Production Update: Australia

Four new feature projects have been announced as being funded by Film Finance Australia Corp., the funding agency, for production next year. Two of the films mark a return home for two critically acclaimed Australian filmmakers while another is set to be helmed by Australia’s most exciting up-and-coming.

The first is the new feature from director Scott Hicks, The Boys Are Back in Town . Hicks, who is currently in post on a film with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart, is best known for Shine, the film that received a number of Academy Award nominations and won Geoffrey Rush an Oscar. Hicks resume also includes the mediocre Snow Falling on Cedars and Hearts in Atlantis.

Boys, which is a co-production between the U.K. and Australia, tells of a sports writer who must suddenly accept single parenthood as he has to bring up two sons from different marriages. The film is being produced by Billy Elliot producer Greg Brenman and Tim White, who produced the hysterical 2003 Australian film Gettin’ Square, through Southern Light Films. The screenplay by Alan Cubbit is an adaptation of a book by U.K. sportswriter Simon Carr. Here is hoping it is a return to form for Hicks.

The second project, Dirt Music, is set to be helmed by Australian filmmaking veteran, Phillip Noyce. For those who don’t know the name, Noyce’s resume is expansive in approach and subject matter. Noyce has helmed Patriot Games, The Bone Collector, The Quiet American and most recently Catch a Fire. Noyce truly shines on his home shores though with Rabbit-Proof Fence , a story of Indigenous Australian children escaping the white colonists to return to their people, being one of his best.

In a dramatic shift from the thematic content of Noyce’s last film, Dirt Music is a psychological romance set in the remote northwest of Australia. I am unsure to what is up there but it will be interesting to see what Noyce finds. Noyce had announced that Rachel Weisz and Heath Ledger were attached to star in the project but Ledger has reportedly pulled out of the project to do The Dark Knight. The project is set to be filmed on location sometime next year.

The third project has quickly become my most anticipated Australian film in production. It is Adam Elliot’s debut full-length claymation feature, Mary and Max. I fell in love with Elliot’s 2003 claymation short Harvie Krumpet, and I wasn’t alone as the film won the Oscar for Best Animated Short. The feature is to be narrated by Australian icon Barry Humphries.

The fourth project, The Square, is an adult thriller by Matthew Dabner and actor Joel Edgerton. Edgerton is probably best known to international audiences as Owen Lars in the Star Wars. Nash Edgerton is producing and the film will co-star the always foxy Rose Byrne.