Australia is paying its biggest Hollywood inducement ever to bring “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” Down Under.
The Walt Disney Studios will film a new version of the science fiction classic in Australia, which will pay the studio 21.6 million Australia dollars ($22.6 million) to film there, the government said Tuesday.
David Fincher of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” and “The Social Network” will direct, said Disney Asia-Pacific spokeswoman Alannah Hall-Smith. (Fincher is co-founder of commercial and branded content production house Reset.)
“No casting decisions have been made,” Hall-Smith said, so the filming schedule and locations haven’t been set.
Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Tuesday that producers were believed to have been in discussions with Brad Pitt, who starred in Fincher’s “Fight Club.”
The newpaper reported that Fincher wanted Pitt for the film’s hero Ned Land.
The story centers on Capt. Nemo and his submarine the Nautilus. Jules Verne’s book was made into an Academy Award-winning movie in 1954 with Kirk Douglas starring as Land and James Mason as Nemo.
The announcement comes after “The Wolverine,” starring Australian actor Hugh Jackman, recently wrapped filming in Sydney. The government paid Fox Studios AU$12.8 million to film in Australia.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the “The Wolverine” created more than 1,750 jobs, contracted more than 1,027 Australian companies and generated AU$80 million in investment.
She expects “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” will create more than 2,000 jobs.
A strong Australian dollar buoyed by a mining boom has made Australia less attractive to Hollywood as a filmmaking location in recent years.
It wasn’t known how much the payment would offset the film’s budget.
“The securing of this film is a huge coup for the Australian film industry and for the near 1,000 local businesses that will be providing goods and services for the film,” Gillard said in a statement.
“The Wolverine” in 3D opens in July in the United States, Australia and other countries.
“Mickey 17” Tops Weekend Box Office, But Profitability Is A Long Way Off
"Parasite" filmmaker Bong Joon Ho's original science fiction film "Mickey 17" opened in first place on the North American box office charts. According to studio estimates Sunday, the Robert Pattinson-led film earned $19.1 million in its first weekend in theaters, which was enough to dethrone "Captain America: Brave New World" after a three-week reign.
Overseas, "Mickey 17" has already made $34.2 million, bringing its worldwide total to $53.3 million. But profitability for the film is a long way off: It cost a reported $118 million to produce, which does not account for millions spent on marketing and promotion.
A week following the Oscars, where "Anora" filmmaker Sean Baker made an impassioned speech about the importance of the theatrical experience – for filmmakers to keep making movies for the big screens, for distributors to focus on theatrical releases and for audiences to keep going – "Mickey 17" is perhaps the perfect representation of this moment in the business, or at least an interesting case study. It's an original film from an Oscar-winning director led by a big star that was afforded a blockbuster budget and given a robust theatrical release by Warner Bros., one of the few major studios remaining. But despite all of that, and reviews that were mostly positive (79% on RottenTomatoes), audiences did not treat it as an event movie, and it may ultimately struggle to break even.
Originally set for release in March 2024, Bong Joon Ho's follow-up to the Oscar-winning "Parasite" faced several delays, which he has attributed to extenuating circumstances around the Hollywood strikes. Based on the novel "Mickey7" by Edward Ashton, Pattinson plays an expendable employee who dies on missions and is re-printed time and time again. Steven... Read More