Fresh from playing the lead in Fat Tony & Co, Robert Mammone will play a homeless man who is confronted by a malevolent presence on a late-night commuter train in Bunny.
The supernatural thriller is due to start shooting in Sydney in May, the feature directing debut of US screenwriter Peter Schink, who wrote and was associate producer on the 2010 pic Legion, which starred Paul Bettany and Dennis Quaid.
Mammone, who came back last week after playing a Greek general in Russell Crowe’s The Water Diviner, will also serve as an executive producer on Bunny.
The plot revolves around a group of strangers on the train who find the body of a young junkie. The original idea came from Sydney-based, US producer Jeff Wannberg, who regularly commutes to and from Sydney late at night.
“Jeff pitched it to me as The Conjuring on a train,” Schink told IF on the line from the US. He co-wrote the screenplay with Kade Robinson.
Aussie Troy Planet is producing with Wannberg. Schink said Mammone got involved via his friend Planet and all four had been developing the project for the past two and a half years.
The other cast is yet to be an announced but all will be Australian. Among the other characters are a Greek Australian, an Indian Australian and a Torres Strait Islander.
Mammone told IF that his work off-camera on Bunny has given him a new appreciation of the role of the producer. "It's no easy street," he said. Originally he intended to take the larger part of another character but decided to play Bosco "as a more controlled role which also gives me more scope as an actor."
He added, "With Peter Schink at the helm, a talented young ensemble cast and a kick ass script, we can't wait to begin filming.”
The DoP is Joseph Pickering (Fat Tony & Co, Janet King, Serangoon Road) and Peta Einberg is responsible for casting. Mammone and Brigham Glaser are the EPs. It will be a four-week shoot on the set of a train at disused railyards.
The actor had a great time in Australia and Turkey shooting The Water Diviner with Crowe, a mate since they made The Crossing in 1989 and Heaven's Burning in the mid-1990s.
His character is among a group of Greek soldiers who went on a rape-and-pillage spree through Turkey to try to reclaim land which they claimed was stolen by the Turks from Greece 450 years earlier.
Observing Crowe first-hand as a director, Mammone said, "He's really impressive, clear, concise and calm. He gets the best out of everyone." Mammone has ambitions to direct but has not yet settled on a project.