If there's one filmmaker who takes his time with his projects, its Baz Luhrmann. Four years passed between "Strictly Ballroom" and "Romeo + Juliet", five years between 'Romeo' and "Moulin Rouge", and now its looking to be six years between 'Moulin' and his next epic.
Yet til now there's been no information on it. We do know its a sweeping Aussie romance epic in the tradition of "Gone with the Wind", that it stars Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, and the script is being penned by both Luhrmann and scribe Stuart Beattie ("Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl", "Collateral").
Well Baz himself has finally spoken out about his plans for the as-yet-untitled project to the Aussie press this week and revealed all sorts of new facts says Baz the Great. Despite the amusing working title of "Project Oklahoma", Luhrmann says that "It's not a musical, and it's not Oklahoma! [Its] classic romance that uses the sweeping landscape of Australia and runs from the mid-1930s to the bombing of Darwin during World War II.
Expect little in the way of effects - "My motivation is not to do it [with computer-generated images]. It's to go the Lawrence of Arabia road and take two of the world's most extraordinary actors - more than two - to some of the most extraordinary scenic landscape in the world. We're going to do what David Lean did. He shot in Wadi Rum [in Jordan]. We'll be shooting in the Kimberleys".
Filming will start in August at the latest, to beat the wet season in northern Australia, with backing from 20th Century Fox. One key role being cast is an indigenous boy aged between seven and 13. Reheasals begin in Los Angeles in two weeks, and the budget is rumoured to be somewhere around $30 million US dollars. The north Queensland town of Bowen is tipped to be doubling for Darwin, and whilst Darwin's wharf may be used for filming, financial restrictions may force more out-of-the-way locations to be recreated at Sydney's Fox Studios.
Luhrmann adds "We've talked about it for over seven years, that we must do something together in Australia. We're in the extraordinary place now where we can do that. Because you've got two Oscar-winning actors, you can actually make a film at a scale that you could never do for an Australian film before".
