Screen NSW is investing $400,000 in 2:22, a psychological thriller from Australian writer-director Paul Currie.
Teresa Palmer will star as a woman who gets involved with a guy who is drawn by a bizarre pattern of events to Central Station every day at 2:22pm and discovers this is the time and location of a murder 27 years ago.
Currie told IF he has pushed back the start of production until early next year while the search continues for the lead male and another key character, the ex-boyfriend of Palmer’s character.
Icon will release in Australia and Good Universe is handling international sales. According to Screen NSW the production will spend nearly $8.1 million in NSW. Currie said the budget will be $11 million- $12 million.
In the latest funding round Screen NSW is also investing $25,000 from the production finance fund and $50,000 from the regional filming fund in Outback ER, Screentime’s 8 x 30’ observational documentary series for ABC TV, which follows the doctors and nurses of Broken Hill Hospital’s Emergency Department.
The other NSW-backed projects are the third season of Mint Pictures’ Bushwhacked!, which tracks two young men (one Indigenous, the other non-Indigenous) as they adventure across Australia in search of endangered life and Aboriginal rites and rituals, for ABC3; and In Films’ No Excuses with Sarah Ferguson, in which the journalist examines domestic violence.
This year the NSW government has invested $3.35 million in 21 film and TV productions, bringing more than $60 million in direct production expenditure to the State.
2:22 is Currie’s second film as director; his first was One Perfect Day in 2004. His directing credits include episodes of TV's Twentysomething and the feature documentary Every Heart Beats True: The Jim Stynes Story.
Currie's screenplay is based on an original concept by Todd Stein and Nathan Parker. Currie’s Lightstream Pictures will produce with Jodi Matterson, Pandemonium’s Bill Mechanic and Walk The Walk Entertainment’s Steve Hutensky.
Currie, Mechanic, James Pang and Wei Han produced Sean McNamara's The Moon and the Sun, a fantasy/adventure shot in France and Melbourne. Paramount has acquired US rights to that film which stars Pierce Brosnan, William Hurt, Fan Bing Bing and Kaya Scodelario, also represented by Good Universe.