Film: Oddball on course to pass Paper Planes

Australian family film Oddball is expected to pass Paper Planes as the third highest grossing local film of the year.

Joel Edgerton has picked up the breakthrough actor award at the Hollywood Film Awards. Picture: Nicole Cleary

This weekend the Australian family film Oddball will pass Paper Planes as the third highest grossing local film of the year. As the commercial success stories keep piling up, the film starring Shane Jacobson and Sarah Snook has added another $730,000 for a total box office of $9.29 million. Paper Planes, also distributed by Roadshow Films, earned $9.65m earlier this year. Last week, Australian films surpassed the all-time box office record of any year of $63.4m (not adjusted for inflation) set in 2001, although the federal government’s key performance indicator for Screen Australia in its portfolio budget statement for 2013-14 was “at least 2.7 million admissions for productions shown at movie theatres”. With an average admission price of $13.68 last year, the sector has flown over that hurdle. Blinky Bill the Movie has bubbled along to a gross box office of $2.7m and Last Cab to Darwin $7.2m.

The Martian dominated the box office again last weekend, here and globally, adding $4.5m for a $13m total. The crime drama Black Mass opened with a solid $1.1m and Miss You Already, starring Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette, opened with $580,000. Black Mass’s Australian star, Joel Edgerton, will further consolidate his credentials for an Academy Award supporting actor nomination with his breakthrough actor award at the 19th Hollywood Film Awards in three weeks. The promotional event isn’t an awards competition as such, although it unofficially opens the film awards season and pushes a few likely contenders. These include the Hollywood animation award for Oscar favourite Inside Out, the lead actress award for Suffragette’s Carey Mulligan, the Hollywood director award for The Danish Girl’s Tom Hooper and the Hollywood breakout actress award for his star Alicia Vikander .

Courtney Botfield has been awarded the 2015 Natalie Miller Fellowship grant. The fellowship, to recognise and nurture the next generation of women in the screen industry, awards a grant of $10,000 to a woman in the Australian screen industry who has demonstrated initiative, entrepreneurship and excellence. Botfield has focused on the new and growing field of impact producing, which is targeting and distributing films with strong social messages for broadest impact. She was awarded the prize, named in honour of the respected Melbourne distributor and exhibitor, at the Australian International Movie Convention. Botfield plans to attend next year’s Media That Matters Conference in Washington, DC.

Screen Producers Australia has secured US film and Broadway producer Paula Wagner as a keynote speaker for the Screen Forever conference on November 16-19 in Melbourne. Tom Cruise’s former producing partner has a long list of credits including the Mission: Impossible film trilogy, The Others, The Last Samurai, Vanilla Sky and Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds.

The opportunities for international productions gaining access to Australia as a location may have increased with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection appointing the Australian Directors Guild as the relevant union to be consulted when applying for 420 visas for foreign screen directors. The ADG, which became a registered union under the Fair Work Act this year, replaces the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance in the role. The effect remains to be seen although there may be an expectation the ADG is more pragmatic about allowing international talent to film in this country than the previously strident MEAA, which is dominated by actors. The ADG also may be more alert to the recent rise of guerilla foreign productions shooting here, particularly ads. “If an advertising agency or production company is thinking about working with a foreign director, they should consult with the ADG before awarding the job,” says Kingston Anderson, chief executive of the ADG.

The Adelaide Film Festival kicks off tomorrow night with the premiere of Scott Hicks’s new feature doco Highly Strung. The Australian’s David Stratton and former on-air partner Margeret Pomeranz remain a hot couple; the festival ambassadors’ Ultimate Movie Quiz Night has sold out. Another early sellout is Girl Asleep by director Rosemary Myers.

The ADG may need to adjudicate on What We Do in the Shadows and Boy director Taika Waititi, who is reported to be in negotiations to direct Chris Hemsworth in the Marvel film, Thor 3: Ragnarok. The New Zealander may be another factor pushing the Marvel and Disney film to the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast Bulletin’s Suzanne Simonot previously has reported the movie will bump into the Village Roadshow Studios early next year. It is one of several productions considering Australia as the Australian dollar has plummeted against the US greenback, with Ridley Scott’s Prometheus 2 circling Sydney’s Fox Studios. The problem is the Hollywood studios argue the federal government’s 16.5 per cent location offset and state government incentives on payroll tax and elsewhere aren’t enough when they consider the $21m cash kickback the previous Labor government provided Disney for the aborted 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea before it was rolled over into Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. And they have a point.