After focussing on TV dramas, David Caesar plans to direct a conspiracy thriller, his first feature since Prime Mover in 2009.
Scripted by Terence Hammond and produced by Antony I. Ginnane, Spontaneous Combustion is set during a pandemic involving government and Big Pharma.
The plan is to start shooting in Melbourne in the first quarter of 2015, with post production and VFX in Queensland. The logline reads, "When a marine biologist who saw his father burst into flames for no reason is drawn into investigating an outbreak of spontaneous combustion deaths by an investigative journalist, they uncover a Big Pharma conspiracy and put their own lives on the line in a race to stop the development of a deadly global weapon."
“David is harking back to his Dirty Deeds milieu here, and he’s a big fan of The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor and The Conversation, which is the zone we are in here,” Ginnane tells IF.
Hammond wrote the 2012 thriller Last Dance, directed by David Pulbrook, which Ginnane produced. He followed that with the South African film Four Corners, co-written with director Ian Gabriel. The coming-of-age street drama was South Africa’s submission for the best foreign language Oscar and had its Australian premiere at the Sydney Film Festival this year.
Caesar’s recent credits include Power Games: The Packer-Murdoch Story, Underbelly, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and Rescue Special Ops.
Ginnane’s latest production, Jon Hewitt’s Turkey Shoot, a futuristic action adventure inspired by Brian Trenchard-Smith’s 1982 cult item Turkey Shoot, will premiere in the Night Shift section of the Melbourne International Film Festival.
Potential will release the film starring Dominic Purcell, Viva Bianca and Robert Taylor in Australia. The launch date will be set after MIFF, Ginnane says, “when get a sense of audience and exhibitor reaction. We will also want to see how we go with the fall international and US fantasy film festivals.”
Richard Guardian’s Guardian Entertainment will launch the international sales campaign at the Toronto festival.
Meanwhile, Mark Hartley’s remake of Patrick, which Ginnane produced, will open in the UK on August 11. Hartley is in the UK this week promoting the film. The distributor, House Entertainment, will platform the film on one or two screens before it hits the premium VOD window, followed by regular VOD.
Shochiku will release Patrick in Japan in October at four cinemas in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka as part of a special event dubbed "Fantastic Selection from Sitges film festival.”