Finn Little and Trevor Jamieson set to be stars of the new Storm Boy
THEY have big shoes to fill but the cast of Storm Boy includes Hollywood actors, a Queensland boy and a group of hard-to-train South Australian pelicans
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MEET the young actor believed to be the new Mike “Storm Boy” Kingley.
Finn Little is an angelic- looking Queenslander who will fill the role that former South Australian Greg Rowe made a household name.
Producers of the new Storm Boy looked in South Australia but spread the net wider for a boy aged 10-12 “who is wild at heart and caught at the magical age between dawn and dusk”.
Little will play the junior version of the film’s biggest star, Geoffrey Rush. In the updated version of Colin Thiele’s quintessentially South Australian novel set in the Coorong, Rush plays Mike Kingley as a grandfather who tells his story in flashbacks to his troubled teenage daughter.
While the film’s publicist declined to confirm casting, the movie database IMDB shows the role that launched indigenous star David Gulpilil 40 years ago, Fingerbone Bill, has gone to West Australian actor Trevor Jamieson, who had a key role in The Secret River on stage and television, and is in ABC sci-fi thriller Cleverman.
The stars – including Suicide Squad’s Captain Boomerang, Jai Courtney, who has just finished a Melbourne Theatre Company season of Macbeth – arrive in South Australia next week for at least four weeks of filming centred in the Coorong which is abuzz with rumours about who got roles as extras and where filming will take place.
The Coorong National Park east of the Murray Mouth is a likely candidate, providing remote “boat only” sites suitable for a story about a grieving father, Hideaway Tom, who lives a reclusive life with his son.
The other key character, Mr Percival, is an unknown. It is understood up to seven pelicans taken from hatcheries near Port Adelaide are being trained – as much as pelicans can be. The original Mr Percival became a popular attraction at the Adelaide Zoo where he died in 2009.
In an interview on the ABC in 2009, Greg Rowe, who lives in Toronto now but visits family in Adelaide, said the birds liked to be patted, and enjoyed having a wriggling hand placed inside their beak because it gave them the sensation there were fish in there.
“Once you got used to a large bird, it was like having a pet,” he said.