Director reveals troubles on set

DIRECTOR Baz Luhrmann has revealed how the fraught production of his fourth major film, Australia, nearly killed him.

The 2008 movie starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, about a British noblewoman inheriting a cattle station on the eve of the Second World War, flopped in the United States but became an instant classic in Australia and Europe.

The blockbuster’s production was plagued by problems, but Luhrmann said he refused to be defeated by setback after setback.

“As a filmmaking experience, it was by far the most fraught., he told Deadline.

“We were hit by equine flu. I went to the desert to shoot, and it rained for the first time in 150 years, so I had a grasscovered desert,” he added. “It nearly killed me, but I wouldn’t give a day of it up at all.”

Luhrmann revealed that he made Australia after going on a “giant journey” making Alexander the Great with Mel Gibson and Leonardo DiCaprio in the father and son roles.

A different version of the movie went on to be directed by Oliver Stone with Val Kilmer and Colin Farrell replacing Gibson and DiCaprio as Philip II and Alexander in a widely panned adaptation of the Greek legend.

He told The Hollywood Reporter in 2013 that he was having trouble conceiving children at the time. He was so devastated by the end of the biopic, he fell into a pit of black despair that left him feeling almost suicidal, he said of the failed production.

“So, instead, I did Australia,” he told Deadline.

“I was really living it, living in North Australia and working with some of our country’s great writers, like Richard Flanagan, learning about the stolen generation,” he added.

“It’s weird because in America it didn’t play at all. It’s the only film I’ve had that didn’t really open in America. Everything else has played there, but it’s the biggest film I’ve ever had in Europe, and it still is.”