by Dov Kornits
“There is no such thing as a new idea,” Mark Twain once wrote, and he wasn’t far wrong.
Fresh off the release of another spider movie, Sting, Sydney filmmaker Kiah Roache-Turner has called action on his follow-up, Beast of War [not to be confused with Kevin Reynolds’ 1988 film of the same name], which he has also written. Produced by Bronte Pictures (Blake Northfield) and Pictures in Paradise (Chris Brown), filming will take place in NSW’s Northern Rivers region and at the Screen Queensland Studios in Brisbane, which is where the production has built Australia’s largest indoor water tank (pictured).
Starring Mark Coles Smith, Sam Delich, Lee Tiger Halley, Sam Parsonson, Maximillian Johnson, Tristan McKinnon, Steve Le Marquand and newcomer Joel Nankervis, Beast of War is about a platoon of Aussie soldiers during WW2, who are shot down by the Japanese and must make it home on a makeshift raft, with a great white shark in their midst.
Behind the scenes are Production Designer Esther Rosenberg (Wyrmwood: Apocalypse), DOP Mark Wareham (The Drover’s Wife) and creature effects studio Formation Effect and its director Steven Boyle (Matrix, Hobbit). Producing is
Beast of War has pre-sold around the world, including Signature Entertainment (UK), Well Go (North America) and on its home turf Australia/New Zealand to Galaxy Pictures, which is a new company created by New Zealand’s Rialto Pictures and UK’s Vertigo Releasing.
