It’s a blustery day at Port Elliot on South Australia’s South Coast and everyone is hunched against the wind.

Off to one side, Hollywood muscleman Jai Courtney is skylarking with Finn Little, the sweet-faced Queenslander who beat a generation of hopefuls to the role of young Mike Kingley, better known as Storm Boy.

Courtney picks Little up by the legs and spins him around while the boy laughs with delight.

Once the cameras are rolling Little walks across the street towards the local fish shop with three pelicans in tow while the locals — the real locals who live in Port Elliot — crane their necks for a better view.

Courtney might be a major Hollywood drawcard known for Divergent and Suicide Squad but he is an Australian who grew up loving Storm Boy.

His mother was a primary school teacher and it was on the curriculum so it was always special.

“The pelican is Mum’s favourite bird because of this story and I always knew that growing up, and that it was connected to Storm Boy,” says Courtney who plays the damaged and reclusive father, Hideaway Tom.

“I’d seen it on stage, read it as a boy, saw the movie.”

His familiarity with the story goes a long way to explaining the cross-generational appeal of Colin Thiele’s 1960s novella which has at its heart the eternal themes of renewal and redemption.

“It was such a no-brainer for me when the opportunity came to come on board because of how impactful it was for me,” Courtney says.

“I know how that is shared by so many people.”

The big question behind the decision to remake Storm Boy — and the State Government’s $1.5 million fight to make sure it was filmed in South Australia — is why we needed another film when the first was so loved.

Less than four years ago a remastered version of the 1976 film starring Greg Rowe, which cost $260,000 to make, drew a crowd at the 2015 Adelaide Film Festival.

“I think the timing was right,” says co-producer Matthew Street from Ambience Entertainment.

“This is more for an international audience and when I went back, the themes around the work were still very relevant and we have a new way of telling that.”

They went back to basics, which meant returning to the book that was written in 1964.

THE ADVERTISER REVIEW: STORM BOY

The original still has its charm but it looks like a film from the past and Michael Boughen, also from Ambience, says the first film was never a reference.

“That film was fabulous, but we felt the time was right to do something else with the story, make it accessible to new audiences with the technology, the new cameras, the new digital world,” he said.

“That way we could create something special.”

The core of the story remains the same but it has been dragged into modern times by bookending it with the original Storm Boy who is now a grandfather and wealthy businessman.

Mike Kingley Snr, played by Geoffrey Rush, is caring for his troubled granddaughter and tells her the story of his transformative childhood experience on the Coorong.

“We’ve created something fantastic that is also very emotional but we didn’t want to be copying someone else’s vision,” Boughen says.

“We wanted to do our own version of the story, and we have, and the two films will exist side-by-side.”

The Coorong locations were almost a given, although not quite.

The then-SAFC chief executive, Annabelle Sheehan, had to fight off interest from other states, particularly West Australia, to secure the production and the Weatherill Government sweetened the deal with $1m channelled through the SAFC and another $500,000 in regional funding.

“I have to admire the courage of the producers because if they mess it up, they will be chased out of South Australia,” then Arts Minister Jack Snelling said in 2017.

Filming was done entirely in SA with locations including the Coorong itself, Horseshoe Bay, Port Elliot, Goolwa, Encounter Bay, Hindmarsh Island and Adelaide Studios at Glenside.

“It’s a favourite story and the landscape plays a character itself in the piece,” says Courtney, who grew up in the Sydney suburb of Cherrybrook.

Technology which is now standard fare for filmmakers allows even greater play to be made of the remote beauty and isolated expanses of the Coorong and the Murray mouth where the River flows (most of the time) into the sea.

Part of the international appeal of the movie is expected to be the beauty and exoticness of the estuary locations.

This time, the shack is on the Coorong itself and its dramatic beauty plays powerfully into the story.

“We use new technology with drones to show (the location) from up in the air so you can see the beauty of the Coorong — that there’s this ocean sandbank and then this beautiful sanctuary,” says Street.

CASTING IS CRUCIAL

On the day of the set visit, shooting was taking place in the transformed main street of Port Elliot whose shopfronts were of sufficient vintage to be easily taken back in time to the late 1950s.

Boughen says the area used for filming was contained with a railway line through the middle and the shops were dressed with period signs for Rosella soups and Bushells tea while the fish shop Storm Boy visits, followed by three pelicans, had old style signs in the window.

Much of it was made around the town of Goolwa, on the beach, in the town and in as many of Colin Thiele’s locations as they could, with an emphasis on the wildlife and the sweeping vistas.

Particular use was made of a site known to locals as Godfrey’s Landing which had the advantage and disadvantage of being accessible only by boat.

“It was handy for security, it’s controllable,” says Boughen who roped off areas in Port Elliot to keep curious onlookers within sight but out of the way.

“It was more difficult for production though, we were ferrying people back and forth all the time.”

Casting was always going to be the key.

Courtney’s appeal was obvious; he was a millennial with Hollywood charisma and an international profile.

Finding the right Mike Kingley was a long process but Little had the necessary mix of appeal and fearlessness and most importantly he wasn’t afraid of being around big birds.

“It’s not scary knowing them because we have magpies that come into our backyard and we feed them so I like birds,” Little says, huddling under a blanket to keep warm.

“Seeing the pelicans up close, I liked them, I wasn’t scared at all.”

The other key character of Fingerbone Bill went to experienced stage and television actor Trevor Jamieson whose work includes the TV series The Secret River and Cleverman, and the 2002 film Rabbit-Proof Fence.

Stepping into a role that launched the career of David Gulpilil was always going to be a hurdle to overcome.

“Talking about David Gulpilil — this story basically skyrocketed him into his career,” says Jamieson. “He brings such magic to it when the camera is on him.”

He shares a scene with Gulpilil whose presence electrified the set when he arrived for a short cameo playing Fingerbone Bill’s father.

It was a magic day for everyone but especially for Jamieson who says Gulpilil influenced him in his choice of career.

“Watching David in the past I’d go, ‘I want to do that, I want to be Fingerbone!’,” he says.

It was a great day, he says, when Gulpilil, who is unwell, came from Murray Bridge where he is living.

“That was my second time on screen with him, the other was Rabbit-Proof Fence,” he says. “He just sits there and he commands the camera.”

What still amazes Jamieson is the lack of racism in the indigenous character that Thiele wrote in 1964, three years before a national referendum finally allowed Aboriginal people to be counted in the census and covered by Federal law.

As a black man in Australia, Jamieson has come across racism in many forms but Thiele wrote Fingerbone Bill as an equal, a black man with as much right to his existence as anyone else.

His backstory about being ostracised from his tribe was reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet, Jamieson says.

“He couldn’t marry the woman that he wanted because she was promised to someone else,” he says.

“So he chose to do something that he really was passionate about, which was the land.”

THE GEOFFREY RUSH CONUNDRUM

Then there is Geoffrey Rush.

He was initially a gigantic drawcard, the lauded actor who would cement the film’s authority as a legitimate successor to the original.

Rush joked in Adelaide that when he got the script he thought they wanted him for Mr Percival because of his role as the voice of Nigel the pelican in the animated children’s hit, Finding Nemo.

“I like a challenge and the opportunity to do a live action Mr Percival was a very big drawcard,” he said.

“Then of course I realised they wanted me to play an old guy.”

Everyone loved him; but in November 2017 a story surfaced that a complaint had been made by an actor, later identified as Eryn Jean Norville, who was his co-star in the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of King Lear.

He sued for defamation and a year later the allegations, which were denied during a trial, kept the issue front and centre.

Then late last year Australian actor Yael Stone made even more explosive allegations, of Rush exploiting the power imbalance between them by sending texts, dancing naked and using a mirror to look at her showering.

Rush said Stone’s allegations of inappropriate behaviour were “incorrect and in some instances have been taken completely out of context.”

The outcome of the King Lear trial could be delivered just after Storm Boy opens and any possible damage done by the saga is as yet unquantifiable.

Rush is featured in the trailer and the school study guide but is not part of the publicity rollout.

The red carpet launch in Adelaide, once imagined as a joyous celebration, went ahead last week with just the director, Shawn Seet, and actors Trevor Jamieson and Finn Little, and a surprise appearance from a frail Gulpilil.

THE PELICANS WHO STEAL THE SHOW

Thanks heavens for the pelicans who were and are still the emotional heart of Storm Boy.

While special effects were on hand in case the pelicans failed to deliver, relatively little had to be used.

For a start, they are delightfully easy to train.

Watching the pelicans fall into line behind Little as the walk to the fish shop and you realise it’s not the boy but the trainer peeping around a corner who they have their eyes on.

Paul Mander, who owns Broadwings Raptor Training Centre in Queensland, says he fed them from the start with a red bucket and if he needed to suddenly get their attention, he just had to wave it at them.

“If they see the red bucket they know usually that it’s full of fish for them,” he says.

“The birds are trained in free flight so they take off skyward and come back when I call them and the red bucket is a great visual sign for them. They can be almost a kilometre away so you have to have something strongly visual for them to come back to.”

He says they have great memories and don’t need to be retold the same thing.

Five birds were raised from chicks, three of which were used in the film, and their training advanced to kicking a football, retrieving an Akubra hat, free fly and return and following around Little who was involved in their training once he was cast.

The fact Little wasn’t nervous made things easier, Mander says, because his confidence came across to the birds.

“They are willing to push the envelope a bit and see how much they can get away with,” Mander says.

“He has built an amazing bond with them.”

One of the birds, Sunny, was trained to appear to die because Mander happened to be watching him one day while he was eating.

Mander says Sunny was feeding on a fish that became stuck in its gullet so the bird flattened his neck onto the ground with his wings up and tried to manipulate it into a better position.

It was an odd movement but as soon as the pelican finished, Mander rewarded him and the dying trick was done.

“Now whenever you give him more than three fish he goes into that scene where he plays dead in the movie,” he laughs.

The birds are playful with each other and affectionate.

On set, sitting next to Courtney or Little, they lean in and almost snuggle, laying their long necks across either one’s chest.

“Yesterday was a lovely day on the beach and I lay down and they all just came and sat on top of me,” says Mander.

“They like to be close to you and often they like to be touching, As soon as you touch them on the side of their neck or their face they’ll pull their head in and push into you.”

The chicks were rescued as babies from an abandoned nest on Bird Island on the Coorong for Mander to raise.

Once filming was over, they were rehomed with two of them, including Mr Percival (Salty) and a female friend (Skye), now an attraction at the Adelaide Zoo which was home to the original Mr Percival (Gringo) until his death in his 30s in 2009.

Courtney says the pelicans were big and unpredictable and delivered the odd, unexpected peck but were interesting to work with.

“That dying is quite the party trick, I can tell you,” he says.

Working with Little who was 11 when Storm Boy was made was also a pleasure and they horsed around, friends despite the difference in their age.

He has been amazed to watch Little grow so quickly as an actor after arriving with only limited experience on commercials and short films.

“They’re long days and it’s easy to forget how exhausting this kind of work can be, particularly for an 11-year-old who is at the heart of it,” Courtney says.

Since Storm Boy was filmed events have overtaken Rush and he could possibly have made his last film.

While Rush appears to have no work lined up, Courtney has three films, including Honest Thief which stars Liam Neeson and one with Michael Douglas.

Little has grown physically and his career appears to be taking off with a role in the Australian Netflix supernatural series Tidelands and the thriller series Reckoning.

He was also back in South Australia late last year filming the sci fi thriller 2067, with Adelaide born Kodi Smit-McPhee and Australian actor Ryan Kwanten.

Courtney says he will watch Little’s career with interest.

“I think they made a wonderful choice casting him, he just lights up the screen and I am excited to see how people receive his performance,” he says.

“I think it’s going to be really incredible.”

Storm Boy opens in cinemas on January 17