Where the big budget movies are being made in Australia
The pandemic is fuelling a rush of big name film and TV screen productions on our shores — but can it last?
Spotted at your local supermarket this week — yet another Hollywood A-lister stocking up on groceries as they prepare to shoot an international film or television series in Australia
Such is the desire to live and work here owing to our COVID-free status (relative to the US and Europe) that the pandemic is fuelling the biggest boom in screen production ever seen in this country.
Spurred to some extent by expats returning home and heavyhitters such as Byron Bay’s Chris Hemsworth, who has the pull to lure streaming giant Netflix to Australia, the influx of overseas film production is bringing some cheer to an industry hit hard this year.
It also places a spotlight on the nation’s talented production crews and glorious natural locations.
In recent days Rose Byrne’s production company has revealed it will film Seriously Red, about a Dolly Parton impersonator in Brunswick Heads, and last weekend the federal government announced a $21.58m grant to support Netflix production Escape from Spiderhead, featuring Hemsworth, which will film on the Gold Coast, and the Toni Collette miniseries Pieces of Her, to be produced in NSW. The Netflix shows are expected to employ 770 people.
Cameras were set to roll this week in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges on Australian outback thriller Gold, starring Hollywood song-and-dance man Zac Efron.
Efron’s involvement in the movie — now delayed (briefly, it is hoped) owing to South Australia’s sudden lockdown — is about a pair of chancers who stumble across the biggest gold nugget ever discovered. The film has taken the High School Musical star — who has been in Australia on an extended holiday but was supposedly returning to the US to film the remake of Three Men and Baby — from gossip page fodder to a card-carrying participant in the Australian screen industry.
Screen Australia chief executive Graeme Mason says the volume of films, television and streamer shows being made here right now has surpassed all previous peaks, including the 2016-17 high point when total spending on drama production topped $1.3bn thanks to production of Marvel’s $US180m epic Thor Ragnarok and Australian director James Wan’s
$US200m action film Aquaman, and a bumper crop of Australian TV drama titles.
“We’re busier than ever,” Mason says. It will take some time to accrue solid statistics, and the 2020 production figures will be dented by a three-month production pause that left only TV news and a limited number of entertainment shows standing.
“In March everything came to a standstill in regard to scripted television,” Mason says. But in April Fremantle Television’s soap Neighbours made headlines worldwide as the first English-language drama back in production after having adopted strict COVID work protocols. Eight months later every suspended series is back in production or complete. They run the gamut from the Ten Network’s Five Bedrooms starring Kat Stewart and Hugh Sheridan, to director Tony Ayers’s cyber thriller Clickbait in Melbourne, starring Entourage star Adrian Grenier, for Netflix.
As productions have resumed and with outbreaks few and far between, confidence in the industry has grown to the point where Australia is the envy of the show business world, Mason says.
Coronavirus halted, or significantly reduced, filming throughout the northern hemisphere at the exact moment when the nascent streaming services such as Netflix, AppleTV+ and Hulu are spending heavily on blue chip dramas, he adds.
Lockdowns have sent TV viewing figures soaring, and streaming services battling for audiences are desperate for fresh programming, with Australia one of the few safe places it can be made.
Industry group FilmLA recently reported production levels in Hollywood are half what they were a year ago.
In Australia the federal government scrambled to unveil a $50m guarantee scheme that enabled productions to lock down their finance — production insurance policies were rewritten after the arrival of COVID-19 to exclude pandemics, causing headaches for those looking to raise funding.
According to Ausfilm, which promotes Australia as a film destination abroad, inquiries are up 215 per cent on the same time last year.
“We’ve have $3bn worth of active inquiries right now,” chief executive Kate Marks says.
In a pre-emptive move in July the federal government announced a seven-year, $400m incentive to attract film and television productions to Australia. Offshore productions can claim a 16.5 per cent rebate from the Australian government on their Australian expenses — provided they hire local cast and crew.
In recent weeks the states also have increased their filming incentives to attract projects.
“It’s clearly working,” says Marks. Collette’s Pieces of Her, produced by Australian Bruna Papandrea, was to have filmed in Canada but now will re-create a Georgian bayou in Homebush, western Sydney.
Hemsworth’s Escape From Spiderhead, directed by Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick, Only the Brave, Oblivion, Tron: Legacy), will shoot at the Gold Coast Convention Centre while the nearby film studio is booked until February by Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic, co-starring Tom Hanks. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has boasted the Hemsworth production will employ 360 local cast and crew and pump around $47m into the local economy.
George Miller’s long-awaited fantasy romance Three Thousand Years of Longing, starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, is about to begin production on Sydney’s northern beaches after a delay because of the virus.
An extraordinary production hub has sprung up around Byron Bay, where Ballina Shire mayor David Wright has endorsed a plan to build a film studio after four shoots converged on the northern NSW coastal town, with others tipped to follow.
Nicole Kidman and Papandrea are filming Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers for US streaming service Hulu. Asher Keddie and Samara Weaving are among the Australian actors who have replaced American actors on the shoot that was due to take place in California. When Kidman and Papandrea pivoted homeward, they brought American cast including Bobby Cannavale who happens to be the partner of Byrne.
Madman Entertainment co-founder Paul Wiegard says the unusually large volume of projects is partly driven by actors wanting to be in Australia. “It was serendipitous, we’re in a time and place in this industry where there’s a lot more access to talent,” Wiegard says.
At Fox Studios in Sydney Marvel’s Shang-Chi and Legend of the Ten Rings is filming again after a coronavirus hiatus.
Next, Natalie Portman — who was photographed shopping at Woolworths in Sydney’s Double Bay this week — is in Australia to film another Marvel movie, Thor: Love and Thunder, directed by Taika Waititi.
And now Portman’s husband, French former dancer Ben Millepied, has shifted his film project based on the opera Carmen to NSW from Mexico.
Broken Hill and Sydney will double for the US-Mexico border and Los Angeles, in the project now being produced by Australian company Goalpost Pictures.
Managing director Ben Grant says Goalpost is also preparing to shoot the second season of the US reboot of the Ms Fisher series, Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries in Melbourne.
A pipeline of work worth $143m has been secured for Queensland where US studio NBCUniversal has committed to three productions across 18 months, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in Young Rock and a drama based on the hit Netflix documentary series Tiger King.
Ausfilm’s Marks says the distribution of shoots across Australian states, plus the mix of Hollywood studio shows, with independent, Australian and Australian network productions will ensure the sector is not vulnerable should one area suddenly dry up.
Producers say costs are rising, with some crew able to double their fees, and each shoot now costing about 10 per cent more because of the complexity of the pandemic protocols.
Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance director for screen crew Kelly Wood says crew are crisscrossing the country for work.
“From what I understand right now we’re actually at capacity, productions are being turned away because they cannot crew them,” Wood says.
“The big studios and big international companies are self-insuring so, here, with a lower risk of coronavirus outbreaks on set is a huge advantage.”
Yet there are fears that when the dust settles after the pandemic — sooner rather than later if a vaccine is successfully distributed — the caravan will move on and the boom will quickly turn to bust.
Regardless of the big incentive s to lure film and TV production to Australia, the federal government this year reduced the obligations of local networks to make Australian drama. And it has not introduced obligations for the plethora of new streaming services launching domestically to invest in local drama.
This strips the industry of protections it has enjoyed for more than a half-century, leaving screen stalwarts nervous about what will be left of the industry when the COVID tap is turned off.
Arts Minister Paul Fletcher says the government is working towards a regulatory framework that treats all platforms equally.
“The largest streaming video services will be asked to commence reporting to the Australian Communications and Media Authority on Australian content acquisition from the 2021 calendar year,” he says.
If those new platforms cease investing in Australian drama, Fletcher has signalled his government could take steps to reinstate some form of protection.