Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
QUEENSLAND ON THE SILVER SCREEN
Although Australia's film industry was founded in Victoria and New South Wales (with no small input from
South Australia), Queensland has made significant inroads in recent decades, which in turn has fostered new
growth in the artistic wing of the industry.
The commercial industry here is based around the Village Roadshow Studios at Warner Bros Movie World on
the Gold Coast - one of two world-class movie studios in Australia (the other being Fox Studios Australia in
Sydney). Village Roadshow has produced a string of films targeting the family market including
Scooby Doo
(2002)
, Peter Pan
(2003) and
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
(2011). Other com-
mercial films produced here include the horror thriller
Ghost Ship
(2002) and
The Great Raid
(2002), which tells
the story of a WWII rescue mission of American prisoners in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines.
In the horror genre,
Undead
(2002), shot in southeast Queensland, is about a town that becomes infected with a
zombie virus. In 2013, Village Roadshow Studios announced it would be the site for the filming of Angelina
Jolie's WWII epic
Unbroken
.
Other titles filmed in the state include the following:
»
Australia
(2008) - Baz Luhrmann's epic was partly filmed in Bowen. The second-highest-grossing Australian
film of all time (after
Crocodile Dundee
) relates the adventure of an English aristocrat (played by Nicole Kid-
man) in northern Australia against the backdrop of WWII.
»
Ocean's Deadliest
(2007) - The last documentary Steve Irwin made before his untimely death features Philippe
Cousteau, grandson of oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.
»
Gettin' Square
(2003) - Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky is this exquisitely funny and dark story about two low-
grade criminals trying to extricate themselves from their past.
»
Swimming Upstream
(2002) - The autobiographical story of Anthony Fingleton, a Queensland swimmer. It
captures the hardship of his life with his alcoholic father (played by Geoffrey Rush) in gritty 1960s Brisbane.
»
The Thin Red Line
(1998) - Terrence Malick's critically acclaimed tale of WWII soldiers in the Pacific.
»
Praise
(1998) - Adapted from the novel by Andrew McGahan, this is a toothy, honest tale of mismatched love
in down-and-out Brisbane.
»
Muriel's Wedding
(1994) - A hit comedy that strips the lino off the suburban dream as Muriel attempts to es-
cape a monotonous life.
»
Dead Calm
(1989) - A taut, underrated thriller-on-a-yacht starring Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill and Billy Zane,
filmed around the Great Barrier Reef.
»
Crocodile Dundee
(1986) - Paul Hogan's record-breaking vehicle to stardom, as well as its two sequels, were
partially shot in Queensland.
