A monkey playing Robbie Williams in a film was a gamble. But it appears to be paying off

Australian director Michael Gracey calls it a film that no studio anywhere in the world wanted to back – a musical biopic in which pop superstar Robbie Williams is played by a CGI monkey.

But even before the independently financed Better Man opens in cinemas on Boxing Day, it has notched up a record 16 nominations for Australia’s main film and television awards.

“They were not excited about the monkey”: director Michael Gracey on the set of Better Man in Melbourne.Credit: Sergej Radovic

Helped by the introduction of new awards for best score and original song, Gracey’s follow-up to the surprise hit The Greatest Showman has beaten the record of 15 film nominations at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards.

The previous record holders – The Great Gatsby, The Nightingale, Nitram and Elvis – all went on to win best film.

The action sequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and the Paul Kelly song adaptation How to Make Gravy both have 15 nominations, and horror film Late Night with the Devil has 14.

They will all be competing for best film against animation Memoir of a Snail and surprise family hit Runt at the awards in February.

In television, the acclaimed Netflix miniseries Boy Swallows Universe has a record 22 nominations, followed by Stan Indigenous drama Thou Shalt Not Steal (nine), Binge-Foxtel comedy Colin from Accounts (eight) and Disney+’s Dickens adaptation The Artful Dodger (eight).

A thrilled Gracey, speaking from Madrid before Better Man’s Spanish premiere, said the film grew out of a year-and-a-half of recorded interviews with Williams during which he often described himself as a performing monkey.

“There’s been plenty of musical biopics, and creatively you always want to come at something in a new or interesting way,” he said.

“It was an idea that cost me many years of my life because people just wouldn’t touch the film.

“They were super excited about ‘the director of The Greatest Showman’. They were crazy excited about Robbie Williams. They were not excited about the monkey.”

Robbie Williams is played by a monkey in Better Man.Credit: Roadshow

Gracey, who said the film became “a passion piece” for the cast and crew during the Melbourne shoot, is nominated for best direction against George Miller (Furiosa), Nick Waterman (How to Make Gravy), brothers Colin and Cameron Cairnes (Late Night with the Devil) and Adam Elliot (Memoir of a Snail).

For the first time at the awards, the motion-capture performance by England’s Jonno Davies, who acted in a motion-capture suit so the monkey in Better Man could be digitally created, and voice work by Sarah Snook, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Jacki Weaver for Memoir of a Snail have been nominated for acting awards.

Davies and Smit-McPhee are competing for best actor against Eric Bana (Force of Nature: The Dry 2), American David Dastmalchian (Late Night with the Devil), Daniel Henshall (How to Make Gravy) and Guy Pearce (The Convert).

Snook is up for best actress against Anya Taylor-Joy (Furiosa), Laura Gordon (Late Night with the Devil), Jackie van Beek (Audrey), Anna Torv (Force of Nature) and Phoebe Tonkin (Kid Snow).

Felix Cameron and Phoebe Tonkin in Boy Swallows Universe.Credit: Netflix

The crossover of acting talent means Torv and Tonkin are both also up for best actress in TV for Netflix’s Territory and Boy Swallows Universe respectively. The adaptation of Trent Dalton’s bestselling novel has nine acting nominations.

“There was so much love for this story and for these characters before any of us were cast, so it was important for us all to show up incredibly prepared,” Tonkin said from New York. “We wanted to do right by a book that’s beloved by so many.”

Boy Swallows Universe is competing for best miniseries against Exposure (Stan), Four Years Later (SBS), House of Gods (ABC), Human Error (Nine∗) and Last Days of the Space Age (Disney +).

The previous television record was 18 nominations for Stateless and Lambs of God, which went on to win best miniseries.

High-profile shows Territory, Plum (ABC), Ladies in Black (ABC) and NCIS Sydney (Paramount +) all missed a nomination for best drama series.

Instead, Heartbreak High (Netflix) is up against Fake (Paramount+), The Artful Dodger (Disney+), The Twelve (Binge-Foxtel), Thou Shalt Not Steal (Stan) and Total Control (ABC).

The changing face of entertainment is reflected in streaming services (led by Netflix and Binge) having 122 nominations, while free-to-air broadcasters have 86 (led by the ABC). Commercial broadcasters Ten, Seven and Nine have only 22 nominations between them.

The AACTA Awards will be held during a five-day festival event on the Gold Coast. The Industry awards are on February 5 and the main awards, broadcast on the Ten Network, are on February 7.

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