Drama Australia

Isnt this old news?

 

Yeah I thought this movie was cancelled.

 

I have same idea.

 

Luhrmann Reveals Title of His Australian Epic
Source: Fan November 22, 2006


The Age reports that Moulin Rouge! director Baz Luhrmann has announced the title of his new epic film starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

"The name is shocking," Lurhmann said with a laugh. "It's called 'Australia.'"

The site says that the film has received the green light from 20th Century Fox. There will be a workshop at Sydney's Fox Studios before Christmas, with the cast working on riding, costumes, the script and test scenes. Filming will start in the Kimberley in March and take five months.

The romantic action-adventure, set in northern Australia prior to World War II, centers on an English aristocrat (Kidman) who inherits a ranch the size of Maryland. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle driver (Jackman) to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier

The title Australia was chosen over "Great Southern Land" and "Faraway Downs," the name of the homestead in the film.

"I'm taking the perspective of the rest of the world to this film how they might view 'Australia,'" Luhrmann said. "When you say 'Casablanca' or 'Oklahoma!' it means big. It means vast... I'm not saying this film is Australia. It's a metaphor for a state of mind, for the faraway.

"What people tend not to know is that more tonnage of bombs were dropped by the same attack force on Darwin as Pearl Harbor. They bombed Darwin 64 times. We were completely lied to in the south about it."

 

Why does it take Baz Luhrman so long to make a movie? His last movie was like 5 or 6 years ago.

 

Because he writes and designs the film himself... That is an enoumous undertaking. I have a deep respect for directors who write and direct their own films. The writing process is extremely difficult and involved. Luhrman has a great track record and he seems to have artistic integrity. Kubrick was the same way. The same could be said about Tarantino.

 

To each his own, I think. There's directors like Clint Eastwood who can do the same quality work and much quicker.

EDIT:

Also, Tarantino is not a good example. The man did three films in 6 years. It took him 7 years to do Kill Bill cause he got lazy or something. While Baz has taken over a decade to make three movies. It shouldn't take you over a decade to make three movies. That's pretty slow.

As for Kubrick...he got slow towards the end. In the beginning he worked fast:

Dr. Strangelove(1964)
Lolita (1962)
Spartacus (1960)
Paths of Glory (1957)
The Killing (1956)

 

Baz Luhrmann on His Epic Australia
Source: AAP December 13, 2006


The AAP reports that director Baz Luhrmann will film around a third of his outback epic, Australia, in Bowen, Queensland. Shooting will start in April in Bowen on the film, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

The romantic action-adventure, set in northern Australia prior to World War II, centers on an English aristocrat (Kidman) who inherits a ranch the size of Maryland. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle driver (Jackman) to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier.

"The film we're making is about the way in which the landscape of Australia transforms this English character, and I really want to go 'old school' in a sense of a film like Lawrence of Arabia or Giant, where the landscape transforms. I wanted to express the romance and the beauty of Darwin in the 1930s," Luhrmann said.

The crew of 200, including its two major stars, are expected to stay in Bowen during the 10 weeks of shooting.

Luhrmann, speaking in Brisbane, said he scoured every major coastal city and town around the country to find the perfect location. But it was eventually Bowen's deep water port, "gorgeous water" and historical buildings that clinched the deal.

Luhrmann said more than 100 locals would play roles such as Japanese pearlers and cattlemen, while students would be encouraged to take part in a bid to encourage young talent to stay in Australia.

 

I think they are more concerned with quality than quantity. Its called artistic intergrity. Who cares if they go slow. They are making films that they are passionate about and not throw away fluff.

 

This film could be good.

 

Uwe Boll does all that too and seems to churn out his stuff too fast

 

Thats old news and Crowe dropped out and Hugh Jackman is playing oppisite Kidman.

 

really?

 

Only thread i could find to put this rather than start a new one

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=18162

 

Is this about Dingos or something?

 

After news of Crowe not playing in this movie, I lost interest.

But I'll most likely see it only because of Jackman.

 

The title of this thread really needs to be changed.

It aint much but first set pic.

http://www.justjared.com/2006/12/25/hugh-jackman-australia/

 

Ahh a gun,so at least there will be some action in thist:

 

Hugh Jackman Previews Australia
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald January 20, 2007


The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Hugh Jackman talked about Baz Luhrmann's epic film Australia at a G'Day USA promotion. Here are several clips from the article:

"This is going to be on a scale never seen before. It's by far the biggest Australian film ever made," Jackman told an Australian gala dinner in New York.

The actor will play opposite Nicole Kidman. Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson and David Wenham will also star in the film, titled Australia.

A promotional clip was shown at the dinner at the end of the week-long G'Day USA promotion

 

http://uk.movies.ign.com/articles/758/758348p1.html

From Ancient Greece to WWII Australia
300 star Wenham cast in Baz Luhrmann epic.
by IGN Staff

US, January 25, 2007 - Actor David Wenham, soon to be seen fighting against hordes of invading Persians in 300, has been cast in director Baz Luhrmann's long-gestating epic Australia. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Wenham will star opposite Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in the picture.

The on-again, off-again project, which was also written by Luhrmann, takes place in the early 1940s in northern Australia, where Kidman's British rich girl is forced to make a deal with a local cattle driver (Jackman) in order to protect her ranch from the scheming Wenham, who has designs on making the property his own. Amid this drama, the specter of World War II looms as the Japanese bombing of Darwin begins.

The film, which has been developing in fits and starts in recent years (Russell Crowe was cast in the Jackman role at one point, only to later drop out), begins shooting in April in northern Australia.

Wenham, of course, is best known to genre fans as Faramir (the brother who couldn't get a break) in the Lord of the Rings films. He also previously costarred with Jackman in the most unfortunate Van Helsing.

 

Dunno how this will go, war epics haven´t done great at the BO lately. But the premise seems interesting.

 

Baz Talks Australia
The helmer on his new epic.
by Stax
February 6, 2007 - Baz Luhrmann cites classics such as Gone With the Wind, Giant and Lawrence of Arabia as stylistic inspirations for his new film Australia, a historical epic set to star Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Bryan Brown and David Wenham.

"[Those] films share something in that they take a heightened emotional story and use the landscape to kind of amplify it. They're mythological pieces, and that's what I'm making," Luhrmann informed The L.A. Daily News.

"The film Australia, set in the '30s, is about a woman who thinks that it's all over, thinks that she can't feel anymore. And she's trapped out in the far deserts of northern Australia. Then she gets involved with a rough-hewed cowboy played by Hugh Jackman, and in the quest they go on, she discovers that her life can be reborn. She chooses to feel, but it takes a degree of risk."

When asked if Australia will have more of a traditional score than his last few films have had, Luhrmann revealed, "Australia ends when the attack force that hit Pearl Harbor came down and wiped out the northern city of Darwin. At the time there was a lot of country-and-western influences from America in the music, a lot of folk influences, Hawaiian influences and jazz band music was the rage. But yet it will be a rather lush romantic score."

 

I think you're forgetting the failed Alexander project. Baz wanted to do a alexader project with Leo as Alexander and ( i think) Dino De Laurentis producing. It was a race between Oliver Stone's alexander & Baz . In the end Baz lost and he he just stopped work on it , or didn't work o it actively anymore.

Not only that but i think it was with this movie that Baz was starting work but ultimately things stalled because Russel Crowe pulled out causing a severe delay. Now the project is back on track

 

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21658462-5006013,00.html

First snap: Kidman in new Baz flick

By Brett McKeehan


May 02, 2007 12:00



Article from:




THIS is the first picture of Nicole Kidman looking grand as cattle queen Lady Sarah Ashley in Baz Luhrmann's sweeping new $120 million epic Australia.

The Oscar-winning beauty, 39, plays an upper-crust English aristocrat who heads Down Under just before World War II to confront her skirt-chasing husband - only to find him dead.


This leaves her in control of a massive Northern Territory cattle station the size of Belgium.


Kidman joins a massive cast of top Aussie talent with Hugh Jackman, David Wenham, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson, John Jarratt, David Gulpilil and Bill Hunter all hand-picked by Luhrmann.


Filming began in Sydney this week at the 150-year-old Strickland House in Vaucluse, which is doubling as Darwin's Government House.
Kidman and a bearded Jackman were earlier spotted brushing up on their riding skills in Centenntial Park. Riding is an essential part of the film - the pair fall in love as Jackman, playing a rough stockman, helps her drive 1500 cattle across the property.


Shooting takes place over five months with the production moving to the tiny North Queensland mango town of Bowen later this month.
The coastal community is now bustling with construction workers as more than eight town blocks are taken back in time.


Stockyards, shacks, old-fashioned cottages, shops and even a hotel have been erected at the oceanfront site.


A 93-year-old sugar cane locomotive called Homebush has even been enlisted to play a significant role in the flick. The loco started chugging around near Mackay in 1915 and was kept in mint condition by sugar company CSR.


Homebush will stay in Bowen until the end of next month - CSR even had to arrange for train tracks to be laid in the town's main street to complete the illusion.


But getting Bowen ready hasn't been all smooth sailing.
New Idea magazine made a classic blunder when it ran a photo purportedly of Bowen's main street with inset snaps of Kidman and Jackman.
Unfortunately the picture is of the main street of Roma - an inland Queensland town at least 1000km to the southwest. It also features a series of distinctive bottle trees, which can't even be found in Bowen.
Bowen Shire Mayor Mike Brunker was not amused.
"Of all the beautiful photos of Bowen they had to go and use one of Roma,'' he stormed. "(The photo) has even got bottle trees in it."





THIS is the first picture of Nicole Kidman playing English aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley in Baz Luhrmann's new movie blockbuster called Australia. See our exclusive picture gallery on the film set in Sydney and north Queensland or ... / The Daily Telegraph