Writer-director Martin Simpson is shooting Indigo Lake, a thriller about an artist who is pressured into painting the portrait of a nightclub owner’s beautiful wife, in Sydney.
Andrew Cutliffe (Home and Away, Wonderland) plays Jake, the painter who falls in love with his subject (Miranda O’Hare), which arouses the suspicions of her husband (Marin Mimica).
The lovers develop a plan to kill the husband by drugging him and driving his car into Indigo Lake. But murder is not as easy as it's painted.
Jonas McLallen is producing with Brian Cobb and Beyond’s Martin Fabinyi as EPs. Beyond will handle international sales and will collaborate with Ross Howden’s Screen Launch on the Australian theatrical release.
Cobb is spending two years with Beyond as part of Screen Australia’s Enterprise program. The feature is financed by private investors and the producer offset. The 4-week shoot is on various locations around Sydney.
Simpson wrote the script in 2011, took the project to the AFM and Cannes the following year but found the budget was too high for potential buyers and investors.
So he rewrote the screenplay and offered it to Cobb, whom he had met via his DP Rodrigo Vidal-Dawson, earlier this year. Cobb sparked to the script and arranged the finance and distribution fairly quickly.
Meanwhile Cobb has produced The Horizon, a 55-minute film spun-off from the eponymous gay-themed online series. The online show is in its sixth season and, says Cobb, has 100,000 subscribers and been viewed more than 40 million times.
Screen Australia funded the film scripted by Boaz Stark and directed by Stephan Elliott under its multi-platform program.
Paul Layton plays Jake, who moves to Sydney from the NSW South Coast and ends up in Oxford street where he is befriended by a caustic drag queen.
Cobb is hopeful of an Australian pay TV sale and that it will appeal to Netflix or other streaming services.