By Don Groves INSIDEFILM – [Thu 19/09/2013 03:38:42]
This may turn out to be a premature and fanciful call but 2014 is shaping as potentially one of the strongest years for Australian films, commercially and critically, in recent memory.
The 2014 release schedule has a broad mix of genres although crime thriller seems the most popular genre. “It’s a good slate,” says Mike Baard, MD of Universal Pictures International, while lamenting the dearth of comedies, with the notable exception of Wayne Hope’s Now Add Honey. Universal will release Jocelyn Moorhouse’s comic drama The Dressmaker, which toplines Kate Winslet and Judy Davis and will shoot in early 2014.
The Weinstein Co’s acquisition of US rights to Jonathan Teplitzky’s The Railway Man and John Curran’s Tracks virtually guarantees both will get a hefty marketing push and choice screens in the US.
Matt Saville’s thriller Felony got rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival, particularly for the performances by Joel Edgerton, Tom Wilkinson and Jai Courtney. Writer-director Aaron Wilson’s debut feature Canopy, set during the Japanese invasion of Singapore in WW11, got positive reactions in Toronto. Greg Mclean’s Wolf Creek 2 had its world premiere in Venice after being pre-sold to every major territory except the US, where a deal is pending. Robert Pattinson, Guy Pearce and Scoot McNairy star in Animal Kingdom director David Michôd’s crime thriller The Rover. Roadshow will release Wolf Creek 2, Felony, The Rover, Now Add Honey and These Final Hours.
EOne Hopscotch will distribute Son of a Gun; Rolf de Heer’s Charlie’s Country; Tony Ayres’ crime thriller Cut Snake, which stars Sullivan Stapleton, Alex Russell and Jessica de Gouw; and I, Frankenstein, Stuart Beattie’s Melbourne-shot contemporary fantasy thriller which sees Frankenstein’s monster protecting the human race against an uprising of supernatural creatures, featuring Aaron Eckhart, Bill Nighy, Yvonne Strahovski, Miranda Otto, Socratis Otto, Jai Courtney and Caitlin Stasey.
Transmission is handling The Railway Man (which opens on Boxing Day), Tracks, Stephen Lance’s My Mistress and, co-distributed with Footprint Films, Fell, a drama starring Matt Nable and Daniel Henshall from first-time writer-director Kasimir Burgess.
Pinnacle will release Peter and Michael Spierig’s Predestination, a time-travel thriller starring Noah Taylor, Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook.
Among other titles due for release next year are Craig Monahan’s drama Healing, John V. Soto’s crime thriller The Reckoning, starring Luke Hemsworth, Jonathan LaPaglia and Viva Bianca, Nadia Tass’ comedy The Menkoff Method, Michael Petroni’s supernatural thriller Backtrack and, from first-time directors, Jennifer Kent’s psychological thriller The Babadook, Josh Lawson’s sexy comedy The Little Death and Geoff Davis’ WW1 drama The Stolen.
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