Reports about the Australian box office often centre on the poor performance of local films, which tend to get praised for their artistry but crushed in the money department by overseas competitors.
This year, however, there may be some light – or at very least, some clouds of post-apocalyptic dust – on the horizon, with locally-made films looking to take in a record chunk of the box office.
The last time Aussie films cracked a 10 percent share of the local box office was way back in 1994, the year of Muriel’s Wedding and Priscilla: Queen Of The Desert.
In 2015, however, locally-made films are looking to hit that benchmark once again, thanks to the success of George Miller‘s intense Mad Max: Fury Road, and old mate Russell Crowe‘s The Water Diviner.
At just beyond the half-way point of 2015, annual box office reports for Australia indicate that Mad Max: Fury Road is our top-grossing local film, pulling in $21.5 million domestically when figures were last reported.
The Water Diviner, released at the very end of last year, took in much of its $15.87 million in 2015, making Crowe’s gruff search for his son another highly successful Aussie enterprise.
Locally-produced kids’ film Paper Planes added $10 million to that total when it launched earlier this year.
With five months and change still to go, and a number of high-profile Aussie films still yet to come out the gates, it’s looking likely that we might crack the elusive 10% for the seventh time since 1977.
Those high-profile films include The Dressmaker, the outback epic in which Kate Winslet and Liam Hemwsorth will attempt to prove their chops as the new Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Then there’s Holding The Man, the ~weepy~ and sure to be highly acclaimed biopic based on Timothy Conigrave‘s memoir of the same name.
We’ve contacted a few film industry professionals to see what they think about our prospects of hitting the big 10% this year – watch this space for more.
via news.com.au
