The Australian Writer’s Guild of NSW Committee next week presents the first “Write Night” event for 2015: Maverick Masters of Mayhem, an evening with Michael Robertson and Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner, creators of Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead.
Michael Robertson is Australia’s busiest genre film producer with a quartet of well known and well-sold genre films under his belt – Black Water, Road Tain, The Reef and most recently The Pack.
The Roache-Turner brothers exploded onto the international horror scene in 2014, launching their ferocious DIY Dawn of the Dead/Mad Max-style monster mash-up at top genre festivals around the world. After four years in production, their hard work has paid off with sales around the world and representation at one of Hollywood’s most respected talent agencies.
Last week their debut film Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead had the dubious distinction of being one of the world’s most illegally downloaded movies.
Horror scribe Shane Krause from the Armstrong & Krause screenwriting partnership (6 Miranda Drive, Bait, Acolytes) will be hosting the event. He says, “The AWG committee gave me a free hand to invite genre guys that I know and/or admired. If I wasn’t involved with the event I would be coming as a guest, sitting in the front row, taking notes and buying these guys beers.
"Robertson is that rare and sexy bird in Australian producing – a producer who gets films made regularly. He has a smart formula and it works. With the Roache-Turner brothers I’m simply delighted that they exist. It’s a crucible of endless pain and suffering to make a low budget movie and these guys have done that and also something even more startling – they’ve made a good movie”.
Krause hopes to add a sci-fi evening to an excellent line-up of AWG events for 2015. He says, “Sci-fi is going apeshit in Oz at the moment – Wyrmwood had an (un)healthy dose of it. We’ve got Infini, the new one from Shane Abbess, and Marc Furmie’s Terminus looks very watchable. Add to that august list last year's Predestination, These Final Hours and The Infinite Man and a few other conceptual gems and the genre is healthy and growing stronger.
"Then there’s the new Mad Max outing which looks like sweet cinematic cocaine for any lover of post apocalyptic revhead bedlam. For the first time in a long time Australia is on the sci-fi radar and we’re damn well going to keep it there.”
The event will be hosted at the Harlequin Hotel in Pyrmont on the evening of Monday 23rd. Tickets can be bought at the door and guests can call the AWG office on 1300 552 228 to RSVP.