by Dov Kornits
“Just as Two Hands was an oblique take on a familiar form a generation ago, Australian Gangster will be a genre-bending crime drama series – confronting, affronting, touching and often laugh-out-loud crazy,” says veteran producer John Edwards, who along with his son, Dan Edwards (the upcoming Romper Stomper series for STAN.) is behind a TV series that will air in 2018, co-written by Gregor Jordan and journalist turned screenwriter Malcolm Knox. The series has Daina Reid (Paper Giants) attached to direct.
“Australian Gangster is a wild tale of gangster ambition where the Instagram generation and Westie underworld collide with Sydney’s glamorous social elite. Against a background of murder and mayhem is a world of spray tans, steroids, tatts, laundered drug money and Lamborghinis, clashing with the pursuit of a happy family life,” goes the press statement. Sounds like Cedar Boys from 2009.
It’s interesting that the whole slant of the announcement was around Gregor Jordan, who we assume will act as showrunner on the project. After 1999’s Two Hands, Jordan only made one other feature film in Australia, 2003’s Ned Kelly. In the US, Jordan made the critically lauded but financially unsuccesful Buffalo Soldiers and later the barely seen Bret Easton Ellis adaptation The Informers and thriller Unthinkable (2010) starring Samuel L. Jackson. In the meantime he’s worked TV both in Australia and abroad and directed TV commercials aplenty.
Australian Gangster has secured production investment from Screen Australia and Create NSW, with casting underway.
