Stephen van Mil is producing a $50 million film based on the life of legendary engineer of the Goldfields pipeline, CY O’Connor, and three years into the project and with at least two years to go, he is not deterred by the time-scale.
These sorts of trajectories are the norm in film production and Mr van Mil, Impian Films’ producer, likens the process to mining.
“It is a big management process. I think a lot of people in WA get it, because it is like a big mining play, you found the tenement and you think there is gold there, then you have to go and drill a whole bunch of holes and raise money against that, and then eventually start shipping the product,” Mr van Mil said.
In 2008, Mr van Mil obtained the rights to Robert Drewe’s novel The Drowner, which recounts CY O’Connor’s life, and has been raising money through private investors for the pre-production phase of the film.
In a coup, Mr van Mil has signed director Fred Schepisi, who is best known for films like Roxanne, Six Degrees of Separation and Last Orders. He said Mr Schepisi’s reputation helped in the pre-production process.
“We caught up with Fred and Geoffrey Rush in Sydney, Fred is very keen for Geoffrey to be in the film, which would be another wonderful thing,” he said.
Having Mr Schepisi on board is also helping in discussions with actors Mr van Mil has been keen to sign on, including Cate Blanchett, Emily Blunt, Liam Neeson and James McAvoy.
Mr van Mil said that with a proposed budget of $50 million, getting well-known talent on the job was important in order to create international appeal and encourage more certainty in international screening and a greater return on investment.
“It is a big project, it is ambitious, but we have all the right people in place and I guess these things rely on having the right people, the right product and the right timing,” he said.
“There is no point just putting it on Australian screens, we are a very small part of the world market. If we were just making a film for an Australian audience, you wouldn’t remotely be considering a budget like this or the people we are talking to.”
Mr van Mil said the story that was anchoring the film might be Western Australian but it had international appeal and his strategy was to immediately position the film internationally by signing a joint production partner in the UK and US-based distribution partner Icon Films.
“It does have international elements, it is a frontier story, it is an epic as far as a film goes and, essentially, it is a story about water and love, it is a big romance,” he said.
Mr van Mil said there was an increasing spotlight on Australia’s potential as a good film production location and put that largely down to the federal government’s introduction in 2008 of a tax rebate, the Producer Offset.
Screen Australia, the government’s direct funding body for the Australian screen production industry, provides a 40 per cent tax rebate for eligible feature films produced in Australia and Mr van Mil said this has incentivised the growth of the industry.
“It is really bringing the big people home and allowing us to raise the money to do the big stories,” he said.
Mr van Mil has secured pre-production funding from independent sources and is yet to secure any of the $50 million production funding. He said 40 per cent of that should come from the Producer’s Offset and is confident the money will be raised.
