‘McLeod’s Daughters’ (Photo credit: Millennium Pictures).
Posie Graeme-Evans, co-creator of the Nine Network drama McLeod’s Daughters, is working on a feature film spin-off with producer Sue Clothier and screenwriter Emma Jensen.
Screen Tasmania is funding the early development of McLeods of Drovers Run, scripted by Jensen (I Am Woman, Mary Shelley) and produced by Graeme-Evans and Clothier.
Based on an origin story by Graeme-Evans, the plot sees tragic, unfinished business that begins in 1850s Scotland at the ancestral home of the McLeods return to haunt the present day family.
The logline reads: “In the end, family is all we have when the past will not die. That’s a good thing. Right?”
Graeme-Evans is convinced there is still a huge appetite for the McLeod’s franchise. Currently screening on Stan, the series won the MEAA’s The Great Australian Binge vote for Australia’s most favourite show.
A McLeod’s Daughters reunion attended by cast members Bridie Carter, Simmone Jade Mackinnon, Lisa Chappell, Myles Pollard and Aaron Jeffery staged in Lismore last December was a sell-out and more such events are planned.
When the producer posted news of the Screen Tasmania funding on Instagram last week, there were more than 3,200 likes. There were similarly enthusiastic responses in 2017 when a reboot of the series was mooted.
“There is a legion of fans out there; it’s the show that will not die,” Graeme-Evans tells IF.
The founder of Northern Pictures, Clothier separately heads Utopia, a production company which launched last year, backed by Transmission Films’ Andrew Mackie and Richard Payten.
Clothier was working on another project with Grame-Evans when she suggested hiring Jensen.
Mackie and Payten are keen to distribute McLeods of Drovers Run and Graeme-Evans aims to have the script finished within one year.
That would be neat timing, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the series’ debut on Nine.