‘Anything with four walls is a film set’: The mega stars lured by QLD’s $414m movie boom

With movie making crippled around the world, Queensland has emerged as a filming mecca, with a pipeline of global productions and big-name stars heading our way.

Amy Price

7 min read

March 5, 2021 - 12:00PM

The A-List stars and films shooting Down Under in 2021

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When the pandemic ground the world to a sudden halt one year ago, signalling a new age of homebound lockdowns and quarantines, we all took collective solace in our screens.

We binge-watched through entire streaming platforms and digitally shared our thoughts with such gusto that series such as Netflix’s Tiger King dominated global conversation for weeks.

But simultaneously COVID-19 restrictions sounded a death knell for productions around the world and threatened the pipeline of screen content we all were increasingly relying on.

Then, there was Queensland.

Within months the state had emerged as a COVID-safe production paradise, offering a Hail Mary to international studios looking to resume big-budget productions left stalled indefinitely in the US.

Chris Hemsworth with director Joe Kosinski and co-star Miles Teller on the set of Netflix movie Escape from Spiderhead on the Gold Coast. Picture: Instagram/@chrishemsworth

By November Tom Hanks was filming Elvis at Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast, Chris Hemsworth began Netflix movie Escape From Spiderhead nearby at the Gold Coast Convention Centre, NBC series Young Rock was underway at Screen Queensland Studios and Netflix’s global teen series Club was shooting in Port Douglas.

Nicole Kidman’s Nine Perfect Strangers filmed across the border in Byron Bay and Australian movie Seriously Red, from Rose Byrne’s Dollhouse Pictures, was beginning in Brunswick Heads,with producers noting they were left fighting for qualified crew now divided across the region.

It signified a complete turnaround from the decimation the sector faced when the pandemic shut down the industry in March, with most of the freelance industry unable to qualify for Jobkeeper, and has resulted in a pipeline of work worth millions of dollars to the state’s economy.

Screen Queensland CEO Kylie Munnich. Picture: Russell Shakespeare

Screen Queensland boss Kylie Munnich said by the year’s end the screen body was fielding requests daily from stalled production houses interested in filming in Queensland as locations teams searched for “anything with four walls” to turn into studio space.

Ms Munnich, who took over the chief executive role from Tracey Vieira in late 2019, admits her team was “limping to the finish line” at the end of the year - she herself worked through until Christmas Eve - all in a bid to make sure the state could capitalise on the lucrative offers squeezing through their doors.

“My team fields inquiries every day,” she said. “We are lucky but are also smart, so we are going to take advantage of that and help people in the Queensland screen industry to thrive.”

“I don’t think it’s a secret that Escape From Spiderhead was filming at the Gold Coast Convention Centre. I think right now anything with four walls and a roof that’s of scale is seriously being considered.

“They (the locations team) have been amazingly inventive about what they can find. We’re not going to be able to take every film in the world as much as I’d like that, but we are managing and we are still attracting more.”

The screen body’s hustling to lock in deals has paid off.

Ron Howard.

In 2020 Queensland secured 36 productions worth an estimated $414 million and 5,000 jobs, with work in 2021 already including Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives, about the 2018 Thai cave rescue, and two NBC Universal series including Kate McKinnon’s series Joe Exotic about the Tiger King star.

Both of those productions are due to begin this month with Howard recently partnering with SQ to employ and mentor four Queensland crew members, who will stand to earn close to $17,000.

Meanwhile Joe Exotic is part of a three-series NBC Universal deal with the Federal Government, which began with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Young Rock in October and will result in a $140 million injection into Brisbane and back-to-back work for 18 months.

Channel 10’s reality juggernaut Australian Survivor has secured for Cloncurry in the state’s north west this year and Australian film Black Site starring Jai Courtney is now filming on the Gold Coast, where Hollywood heavyweight Mark Wahlberg has also suggested he is set to film a movie in the second half of the year.

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Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said they were experiencing “more demand than ever before” to film in the state, which would set up a lasting industry.

“Throughout the world, the screen industry has ground to a halt during the coronavirus pandemic,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“There is huge demand for our facilities, our crews and our staff and all this means long-term, sustainable jobs.”

Young Rock. Picture: Mark Taylor

Joe Exotic and Young Rock as well as Thirteen Lives and Escape From Spiderhead, Queensland’s first Netflix Original film, were due to shoot in the US before the COVID-19 pandemic stopped cameras across the world.

At the time, the world looked to Queensland when Elvis star Hanks, who was in preproduction on the Gold Coast, confirmed his COVID-19 diagnosis, in what was among the first high-profile Queensland cases of the virus.

Ron Howard completes hotel quarantine in Queensland

It subsequently signalled the shutdown of the screen industry in the state, halting cameras on the Baz Luhrmann movie as well as TV series Harrow and The Bureau of Magical Things.

Concerned about their own business, Screen Queensland mobilised an advisory task force and repurposed existing funds into a $3.3 million COVID-assistance package, while working on COVID-safe guidelines to resume production.

While they funded projects that would start immediately, beginning with movie This Little Love of Mine in Cairns in June, it was the return of Luhrmann’s Elvis movie on the Gold Coast in September - which through Hanks had the world’s attention - that set the wheels in motion.

“That is a sizeable production … so the stakes are very high and they have thousands of days of extras working on set,” Ms Munnich said.

“It did take them quite some time to work out with Warner Bros their COVID-Safe plan … but that absolutely sent a signal to the world that Queensland was safe and we’ve become the focus of a lot of attention from the global and national screen industry.”

Kylie Munnich.

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Critically, after the COVID-safe plan came into effect in June, the Federal Government announced a $400 million boost to the nearly-depleted tax offset in July.

That cash injection along with the successful resumption of a $200 million production opened the floodgates for Queensland to beat international competitors in securing the lucrative projects with NBC, Netflix and MGM for Thirteen Lives.

The Queensland Government’s attraction incentive is kicked in at the end of the production as a sweetener, once the project has already made their investment into the state’s economy, meaning the Federal Government’s input was imperative.

“For Australia to offer that equivalent 30 per cent of budgets plus what a state agency like ours kicks in as well, that is really critical for those studios and producers and streaming platforms to know the certainty of their budget,” Ms Munnich said.

“Film and television is a very expensive business so if you add in the complexity of COVID-related delays that’s costing you more money.”

“If you look to Queensland and right now you see that productions can continue, for the bottom line of a project that’s very attractive.”

She said locations, such as Howard needing outdoor spaces that could pass for the Thai cave system in Thirteen Lives, also played a part while Byron Bay local Hemsworth was “super enthusiastic to come here” to film for Netflix.

Holey Moley filmed in Queensland. Picture: Paul A. Broben

Meanwhile Queensland is attracting interest from reality TV franchises, having secured Channel 7’s Holey Moley, which was originally due to film on the American show’s custom set in Los Angeles in March but found a safe haven in Redland City.

A spokesman from production company Eureka said they were now fielding interest from other countries interested in filming their versions of Holey Moley on the Queensland site.

Taking advantage of the state’s COVID-safe climate, Millionaire Hot Seat temporarily relocated to the Gold Coast in October, The Amazing Race began in Cairns and travelled through Queensland until borders reopened and now Ten has moved Survivor from Fiji to the Queensland Outback.

With expensive quarantine requirements for international and interstate cast and crew, Queensland workers were given unprecedented opportunity on the productions with Holey Moley employing 131 Queensland crew members and Young Rock and Thirteen Lives relying on local extras.

Local acting agencies brought in American dialect coaches to prepare their actors, while extras casting director Bud Hopes, who has cast extras on big Gold Coast productions for the last 15 years, said it was the “busiest we’ve ever been”.

Ms Munnich said they would continue to announce projects in the coming months, with a goal to create “a pipeline of projects” to ensure film industry workers don’t have to go elsewhere, as they typically might have done, to have a sustainable career.

“The outlook was quite dire as it was for every industry,” Ms Munnich said of this time last year.

“We saw the urgency with which we needed to act for all of the industry.”

“The creative industries are a legitimate industry like any, like agriculture or mining, it has an economic benefit to the state, it pumps money in, it creates jobs but it also has great cultural significance, so whether we are creating Australian stories or helping to create global stories that sell around the world we should take our place proudly alongside any other Queensland-based or Australian-based industry because we are equally valuable.”

“You only have to look at how much content we consumed last year, how much we’ve streamed to know that entertainment is really valuable and critical for people’s happiness and cultural health.”