FARAWAY DOWNS
It’s pretty common for movies to get TV spinoffs these days – look at just about any of the Marvel or Star Wars shows on this streamer, like The Continental on Prime or Monarch: Legacy of Monsters on Apple TV+.
It’s a lot less common for a director to revisit a movie that flopped, and re-edit it into a TV series, which is what BAZ LUHRMAN N has done with Australia.
The 2008 movie, which stars Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, is getting a second lease on life and even more epic treatment as Faraway Downs, a six-part limited series.
“I was inspired to re-approach my film Australia to create Faraway Downs because of the way episodic storytelling has been reinvigorated by the streaming world,” Baz said in a statement.
He and his crew revisited over two million feet of film shot for Australia to assemble the series. The Faraway Downs story is the same as Australia: Nicole plays Lady Sarah Ashley, an English aristocrat who goes to Oz after her husband’s death to sell a cattle ranch, but the property becomes the centre of a dispute between a ruthless cattle baron and Lady Sarah, who teams up and falls in love with Drover, a local ranch hand (Hugh Jackman). The film has long been one of the stars’ most prominent flops, with Nicole once saying in an interview, “I can’t look at this movie and be proud of what I’ve done. I sat there and I looked at [husband Keith Urban] and went, ‘Am I any good in this movie?’ But I thought Brandon Walters (the 11-year-old Aboriginal boy who played Nullah) and Hugh Jackman were wonderful. It’s just impossible for me to connect to it emotionally at all.”