Playground Films has optioned Hilary Bell’s Sydney Theatre Company stage play Splinter and Fiona Wright’s novel Small Acts of Disappearance.
David Barker and Melissa Anastasi are currently adapting both works; Splinter into a feature film, and Small Acts of Disappearance into an eight-part TV dramedy.
Splinter centres around an abducted child, mysteriously returned to her parents nine months after her disappearance, unable, or unwilling, to speak. A modern-day gothic, it follows the unravelling of the parents’ relationship in the aftermath of their trauma.
Anastasi, whose short film Chlorine recently won an Australian Directors’ Guild Award will direct, with Barker to produce. The project is currently in script development in consultation with Bell.
“The first time I read Splinter I was immediately struck by the power of the text, which explores themes of obsession, grief, childhood and identity, with the underlying disquiet of a classic gothic mystery. It’s...
David Barker and Melissa Anastasi are currently adapting both works; Splinter into a feature film, and Small Acts of Disappearance into an eight-part TV dramedy.
Splinter centres around an abducted child, mysteriously returned to her parents nine months after her disappearance, unable, or unwilling, to speak. A modern-day gothic, it follows the unravelling of the parents’ relationship in the aftermath of their trauma.
Anastasi, whose short film Chlorine recently won an Australian Directors’ Guild Award will direct, with Barker to produce. The project is currently in script development in consultation with Bell.
“The first time I read Splinter I was immediately struck by the power of the text, which explores themes of obsession, grief, childhood and identity, with the underlying disquiet of a classic gothic mystery. It’s...
- 11/13/2020
- by Jackie Keast
- IF.com.au
‘Hotel Mumbai’.
Nick Matthews was named Australian cinematographer of the year for his work on director Anthony Maras’ Hotel Mumbai at the annual Australian Cinematographers Society (Acs) National Awards on Saturday night.
In addition, he collected the Gold Tripod for features budgeted above $2 million with Denson Baker receiving an award of distinction in that category for Claire McCarthy’s Ophelia.
In the awards presented online, Dion Beebe, Roger Lanser and John Wheeler were inducted into the Hall of Fame and the Ron Windon Award went to Robb Shaw-Velzen.
For features budgeted below $2 million Joshua Flavell received the Gold Tripod for David Barker’s Pimped and Chris Bland got the award of distinction for Heath Davis’ Locusts.
Among the other honorees, Zoe White won the drama series or telefeatures prize for The Handmaid’s Tale and Katie Milwright took the dramatised documentaries gong for Matthew Sleeth’s Guilty, which chronicles the final...
Nick Matthews was named Australian cinematographer of the year for his work on director Anthony Maras’ Hotel Mumbai at the annual Australian Cinematographers Society (Acs) National Awards on Saturday night.
In addition, he collected the Gold Tripod for features budgeted above $2 million with Denson Baker receiving an award of distinction in that category for Claire McCarthy’s Ophelia.
In the awards presented online, Dion Beebe, Roger Lanser and John Wheeler were inducted into the Hall of Fame and the Ron Windon Award went to Robb Shaw-Velzen.
For features budgeted below $2 million Joshua Flavell received the Gold Tripod for David Barker’s Pimped and Chris Bland got the award of distinction for Heath Davis’ Locusts.
Among the other honorees, Zoe White won the drama series or telefeatures prize for The Handmaid’s Tale and Katie Milwright took the dramatised documentaries gong for Matthew Sleeth’s Guilty, which chronicles the final...
- 5/17/2020
- by The IF Team
- IF.com.au
‘Top End Wedding’, ‘Hearts and Bones’ and ‘The King’ are among the 34 longlisted films.
Some 34 feature films will compete for nominations for this year’s Aacta Awards, and the longlist covers a diverse range of titles, from box office earners like Top End Wedding and Storm Boy, through to critically lauded films like The Nightingale and micro budget indies such as Suburban Wildlife.
However, perhaps the most notable inclusion in the longlist is David Michôd’s Netflix Original The King, which premiered at Venice Film Festival last week to an eight-minute standing ovation.
Typically, to be eligible for Aacta Awards, a film – even when made for a streaming platform – must have paid cinema screenings in Australia or local festival play.
Aacta has made an exception for The King, which is not due to play in Australian cinemas or in festivals before its release on Netflix later this year, because of...
Some 34 feature films will compete for nominations for this year’s Aacta Awards, and the longlist covers a diverse range of titles, from box office earners like Top End Wedding and Storm Boy, through to critically lauded films like The Nightingale and micro budget indies such as Suburban Wildlife.
However, perhaps the most notable inclusion in the longlist is David Michôd’s Netflix Original The King, which premiered at Venice Film Festival last week to an eight-minute standing ovation.
Typically, to be eligible for Aacta Awards, a film – even when made for a streaming platform – must have paid cinema screenings in Australia or local festival play.
Aacta has made an exception for The King, which is not due to play in Australian cinemas or in festivals before its release on Netflix later this year, because of...
- 9/10/2019
- by jkeast
- IF.com.au
Jason Isaacs and Nazanin Boniadi in ‘Hotel Mumbai.’
The timing could not have been worse: Hotel Mumbai opening in Australian cinemas the day before the horrific slaughter of innocents at two mosques in Christchurch.
Anthony Maras’ thriller based on the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai is a superbly-made film but the subject was not something that many Australian cinemagoers wanted to experience amid the shock and grief over events in Christchurch.
Released by Icon, the film co-written by Maras and John Collee, starring Dev Patel, Armie Hammer, Nazanin Boniadi, Anupam Kher and Tilda Cobham-Hervey, opened in second spot, taking $979,000 on 268 screens and $1.06 million including previews.
To be fair to the producers, Basil Iwanyk, Gary Hamilton, Mike Gabrawy, Julie Ryan, Andrew Ogilvie and Jomon Thomas, that is not a bad result and receipts may well build on word of mouth – but my guess is the total would have been at least $500,000 higher...
The timing could not have been worse: Hotel Mumbai opening in Australian cinemas the day before the horrific slaughter of innocents at two mosques in Christchurch.
Anthony Maras’ thriller based on the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai is a superbly-made film but the subject was not something that many Australian cinemagoers wanted to experience amid the shock and grief over events in Christchurch.
Released by Icon, the film co-written by Maras and John Collee, starring Dev Patel, Armie Hammer, Nazanin Boniadi, Anupam Kher and Tilda Cobham-Hervey, opened in second spot, taking $979,000 on 268 screens and $1.06 million including previews.
To be fair to the producers, Basil Iwanyk, Gary Hamilton, Mike Gabrawy, Julie Ryan, Andrew Ogilvie and Jomon Thomas, that is not a bad result and receipts may well build on word of mouth – but my guess is the total would have been at least $500,000 higher...
- 3/18/2019
- by The IF Team
- IF.com.au
‘Pimped’
David Barker’s psychological thriller Pimped, which explores what might happen if two men lured a woman who proved to be stronger, smarter and more cunning than them, won the Australian feature award at Monster Fest: The Homecoming.
Staged at Cinema Nova from November 22-25, the seventh edition of Monster Fest drew nearly 2,900 patrons, a record for the event.
The Golden Monster award for best feature went to director Jonas Åkerlund’s Lords of Chaos, which is set in Oslo in 1987 and stars Rory Culkin as a teenager who forms the aptly-titled black metal band Mayhem with his equally fanatical mates. They begin burning down churches throughout the countryside and stealing tombstones for their record store, leading to violence. It has yet to find a local distributor.
Robbie Studsor’s Burning Kiss, the saga of a detective (Richard Mellik) who seeks vengeance from a hit-and-run that killed his wife and left him wheelchair-bound,...
David Barker’s psychological thriller Pimped, which explores what might happen if two men lured a woman who proved to be stronger, smarter and more cunning than them, won the Australian feature award at Monster Fest: The Homecoming.
Staged at Cinema Nova from November 22-25, the seventh edition of Monster Fest drew nearly 2,900 patrons, a record for the event.
The Golden Monster award for best feature went to director Jonas Åkerlund’s Lords of Chaos, which is set in Oslo in 1987 and stars Rory Culkin as a teenager who forms the aptly-titled black metal band Mayhem with his equally fanatical mates. They begin burning down churches throughout the countryside and stealing tombstones for their record store, leading to violence. It has yet to find a local distributor.
Robbie Studsor’s Burning Kiss, the saga of a detective (Richard Mellik) who seeks vengeance from a hit-and-run that killed his wife and left him wheelchair-bound,...
- 11/26/2018
- by The IF Team
- IF.com.au
‘Lords of Chaos.’
The organisers of Monster Fest aim to parlay the brand into a theatrical distribution gateway for Australian and international genre films.
Monster Films has successfully trialed the concept with Mandy, Panos Cosmatos’ neo-noir horror movie which it sub-licensed from Madman Entertainment.
Next year the distributor will release Luke Sparke’s Occupation: Rainfall, a sci-fi thriller which stars Crazy Rich Asians’ Ken Jeong, Temuera Morrison, Dan Ewing, Stephany Jacobsen, Aaron Jeffery and Zac Garred.
Monster’s Grant Hardie developed a relationship with Sparke after staging sold-out special event screenings for Occupation.
“We want to turn the Monster Fest brand into a legitimate theatrical pathway with a cinema network consisting of as many locations as we can secure to build audiences,” Hardie tells If. “Genre films are under-represented in cinemas.”
While he has no titles lined up to release apart from the Occupation sequel, he is open to talking to producers.
The organisers of Monster Fest aim to parlay the brand into a theatrical distribution gateway for Australian and international genre films.
Monster Films has successfully trialed the concept with Mandy, Panos Cosmatos’ neo-noir horror movie which it sub-licensed from Madman Entertainment.
Next year the distributor will release Luke Sparke’s Occupation: Rainfall, a sci-fi thriller which stars Crazy Rich Asians’ Ken Jeong, Temuera Morrison, Dan Ewing, Stephany Jacobsen, Aaron Jeffery and Zac Garred.
Monster’s Grant Hardie developed a relationship with Sparke after staging sold-out special event screenings for Occupation.
“We want to turn the Monster Fest brand into a legitimate theatrical pathway with a cinema network consisting of as many locations as we can secure to build audiences,” Hardie tells If. “Genre films are under-represented in cinemas.”
While he has no titles lined up to release apart from the Occupation sequel, he is open to talking to producers.
- 10/11/2018
- by The IF Team
- IF.com.au
Receiving its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, here’s the poster and trailer for Raven Banner’s upcoming revenge thriller Pimped, which comes from director David Barker (The Future Machine) and stars Ella Scott Lynch, Benedict Samuel, Heather Mitchell, and Lewis Fitzgerald.
The film sees two twisted housemates lure an unbalanced woman into a sexual trap, with murderous results…...
The film sees two twisted housemates lure an unbalanced woman into a sexual trap, with murderous results…...
- 5/10/2018
- by Phil Wheat
- Nerdly
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