Adam Horner: Christmases All At Once

By Dov Kornits

Christmas Down Under is a family film about Ellie (Home and Away’s Justine Kacir), ‘…who flies to Australia and enlists the help of an Aboriginal tour guide and a YouTube famous Uber driver to find her husband and his eclectic family, and along the way, find her true self.’

The supporting cast includes plenty of familiar faces, including John Jarratt and Louis Mandylor in a cameo, and also on directing duties. Like his brother Costas, Louis went straight to the US to break into the acting game, landing a pivotal supporting role in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. More recently, Mandylor has turned to directing, which he does back on home turn with Christmas Down Under.

We spoke with Adam Horner upon completion of the shoot.

Do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? How did you arrive at where you are today?

I started off as an actor in Australia, just doing commercials and stuff like that, found myself meeting a couple of casting directors from LA. I started auditioning and had a big agent, and a big manager over there, and I did a couple of films as an actor. Everything slowed down for me, and everyone was constantly saying, ‘make your own work’. And I did what everyone else does, and basically started developing a web series. Then realised that there was no way to monetise that, and through that development process taught myself the ins and outs of developing programs. I started researching and everyone was doing low-budget horror films, so I wrote myself a low-budget horror film, managed to partner up with a producer in Los Angeles. And basically, cut a deal with him that was, ‘I’ll give you the script for free, I want to be in it, I’ll raise half the funds’. I had no idea how I was going to do it but taught myself the ins and outs of production. And haven’t stopped basically. I’ve produced a lot of stuff in LA. I’ve been out there for almost seven years, producing out there for probably about two years now, but obviously Sydney is home, and now that I’ve got that American producing mindset, and I know how to monetise films and sell them, and I’ve got the company out there, we’ve got a distribution deal with a domestic distributor out there. I’ve got my team out in Los Angeles, we’re constantly producing movies, doing them back to back out there, and I’m trying to get the same machine set up in Australia. This is the first, and I’ve got about three lined up for this year in Australia.

 Even by the title alone, it sounds like there’s a pipeline for being able to sell this particular film.

I want to make good films, but I don’t just want to do what I feel like a lot of Australian filmmakers do, which is focus on domestic markets, without any thought about the international markets. My films have a very big American/Australian crossover a lot of the time. Most of the lead characters in this movie are American, it’s about an American family who comes to Australia and has a summer Christmas. On the American side, they haven’t seen a summer Christmas movie before, and it’s very, very Australian, but it’s a comedy, it’s a Crocodile Dundee type comedy, so it’s very marketable in America, but also enjoyable to Australians. And then, some jokes that the Australians will get, but the Americans won’t, are slipped in there. Definitely a funny little movie.

 Do you think Australia will embrace it?

Absolutely, 100%. It’s got that American studio feel, which is what Australians are used to. It’s very high production value. And like I say, there’s a lot of stuff in it for Australians, there are little jokes slipped in here and there.

 Louis Mandylor is primarily known as an actor. Have you been working with him to get him to direct a film for a while?

I did a movie with him in the States [The Perfect Summer], while we were both in North Carolina. That’s how I met him, we were both actors, and then he hit me up one time, out of the blue, and was like, ‘hey, what are you up to tonight?’ and I was like ‘nothing, why?’ ‘I’m having a premiere, come to my premiere’, and I was like okay. So I went to his premiere, it was at this big flash theatre on Sunset Boulevard, but I’m thinking, ‘he’s an actor, right, he’s done all this stuff, he’s in My Big Fat Greek Wedding’, and I get to the cinema, and I sit down, and I’m messaging him like ‘where are you, I’m here, why can’t I see you?’ And before I know it the movie’s about to start, and they’re like, ‘and we want to introduce the director, Louis Mandylor’, and he walks down from the back and does his speech. And I’m like, ‘oh, I didn’t know he was directing this’. It was this horror movie [The Blackout], and he absolutely killed it, it was very, very well done, well put together, the performances were fantastic, the production value far exceeded the budget. I really couldn’t fault it in any way. And after, I was like, ‘dude, I didn’t know you directed!’ And then he’s called me up a few times, we had this TV pilot out in Romania, and he directed that, and I was an actor in it, and that was the first time I’ve worked with him as an actor and a director. Again, he was just amazing to work with, really passionate about directing, and as he gets older he wants to explore that side of himself.

When I was putting Christmas Down Under together, it was a very challenging movie to produce, because we kept the budget low. I’m always weary and like to protect my investors as much as I can, but I also needed someone who could handle this ensemble cast, twenty location shoot, with a fairly tight schedule, who was an actor’s director, and who understood the crossover between Australian and American comedy. And I immediately thought of him. I said, ‘do you want to come and do this?’ and he said, ‘ooooohhhhh, send me the script, I’ll have a look at it’. He read the script and called me straight away and said, ‘dude, this is absolutely fantastic,’ I said, ‘I told you it was a good one!’ and he said, ‘we have to make this.’

Expect Christmas Down Under to release around Christmas time 2018. Follow the movie via the official Instagram page @ChristmasDownUnder2018 and Facebook page www.facebook.com/christmasdownunder2018.

Photo by Ananta Taneja