Mel Gibson back in Oz after 30 years to direct WWII pic

Mel Gibson is about to make his first film in Australia in 30 years, a World War II drama set mainly in Okinawa.

Picking up where he left off: Mel Gibson at Sydney’s Fox Studios yesterday. Picture: Gregg Porteous

Mel Gibson is about to make his first film in Australia in 30 years, a World War II drama set mainly in Okinawa and filmed in NSW.

“I feel like I’ve picked up the thread where I left off,” said the man who became Hollywood’s biggest star after leaving home following Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985. “I’m glad to be here again, working here again, bumping into people I’ve known for years, decades even.”

It is unclear whether the new film he will direct, Hacksaw Ridge, will be classified as an Australian film and subsequently qualify for the 40 per cent tax offset from the federal government.

Producer Bill Mechanic, who has recently shot The Moon and the Sun with Pierce Brosnan, William Hurt and Rachel Griffiths in Melbourne and Paul Currie’s film 2.22, starring Teresa Palmer, in Sydney wouldn’t comment on whether the film would be “Australian” or would qualify for the lesser 16.5 per cent location offset for international productions.

Gibson said most of the cast and crew would be Australian and the screenwriter of The Water Diviner and SeaChange, Andrew Knight, has co-written the screenplay.

He added that he was thankful for the NSW government’s investment in the project, which would help generate more than 700 jobs and more than $26 million in production expenditure to locations in Sydney, including Fox Studios Australia and the western suburbs, and regional NSW, expected to include the Southern Highlands and the central west.

Andrew Garfield, star of The Amazing Spider-Man, will play Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector in US history to be awarded the Medal of Honor.