by FilmInk Staff
“What a joy to finally be collaborating with Warwick – a filmmaker whose warmth, wit and humanity we have admired for so very long,” said Cate Blanchett in a press release. “We can’t wait to be on the ground with him and the wonderful Kath Shelper to realise this startling story.”
Written and directed by Thornton, the story is set in 1940s Australia and follows a 9-year-old Aboriginal orphan boy who turns up a monastery run by a renegade nun, plated by Blanchett. According to the press release, ‘The New Boy’s presence disturbs the delicately balanced world in this story of spiritual struggle and the cost of survival.’
“The idea for the story of this little boy has been flickering in my imagination for a long time,” added Warwick Thornton, whose last feature film Sweet Country was his best work yet, and whose series Firebite (along with Brendan Fletcher) is currently streaming on AMC+.
“Kath and I are beyond excited to be working with Cate and the Dirty Films mob to put him up on the big screen where he belongs.”
Kath Shelper and her Scarlett Pictures was Thornton’s producer on his early short films and features, and this will be their first collaboration since 2013’s The Darkside. Dirty Films is Cate Blanchett’s production company – with her partners Andrew Upton and Coco Francini – which produced TV shows Mrs America and Stateless, and most recently Eva Orner’s documentary Burning. Upcoming film projects include Pedro Almodovar’s A Manual for Cleaning Women, Ben Stiller’s The Champions and Queen Bitch and the High Horse, to be directed by Bert and Bertie.
The New Boy is scheduled to shoot in South Australia in October, and will be distributed by Roadshow in Australia.
