Teresa Palmer, Callan Mulvey, Luke Hemsworth and Bryan Brown have joined the cast of Kill Me Three Times, Kriv Stenders’ crime thriller which started shooting in Perth on Monday.
That quartet adds a fair bit of star-power to the already-announced Simon Pegg, Alice Braga (the Brazilian actress who stars in Elysium) and Sullivan Stapleton. Scripted by first-timer James McFarland, an Irishman, the tale of murder, blackmail and revenge is set in an Australian surfing town.
The subject sounds far removed from Stenders’ breakthrough hit Red Dog but he says there are similarities. “This is a fun, commercial movie,” he told IF today on his way to the set. “It plays with the genre and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Like Red Dog it’s made for a broad international audience.”
The producers are Laurence Malkin and Share Stallings (the team behind Death At A Funeral and A Few Best Men) and Tania Chambers, former CEO of Screen NSW and ScreenWest.
Stenders met Malkin last year and in October was sent a copy of McFarland’s script and offered the directing gig. The producers asked him to decide within a week. ”The script is a ball-tearer: I signed up straight away,” he said.
The shoot will take just over six weeks with locations in and near Perth and in Margaret River. “It’s a challenging budget and a challenging schedule, but that’s what we do best in Australia- we get on with it,” he added. The DoP is Geoffrey Simpson.
Pegg plays a mercurial assassin who is hired by a wealthy guy (Mulvey) to kill his wife, a young singer (Braga). Stapleton has been cast as a gambling addict who attempts to pay off his debts through a risky life insurance scam. Palmer is a small town “Lady Macbeth” who masterminds the scheme.
Brown is a corrupt cop who also tries to get his cut and Hemsworth portrays Braga's love interest, a local surfer who hopes to rescue the young woman from Pegg's telescopic sights.
Palmer (Wish You Were Here, Warm Bodies) was cast after Abbie Cornish dropped out for scheduling reasons and Mulvey took the role originally intended for Ben Mendelsohn.
“We’ve been searching for a film like Out of Sight, where flawed but human characters manipulate, murder and make love to each other in really fun and suspenseful ways,” said Malkin. “James’ script struck just the right chord, surrounding the emotional core with action, romance and dry humour.”
Hopscotch eOne is the Australasian distributor. Cargo Entertainment is handling international sales and WME reps North America.
The financiers are Screen Australia, ScreenWest, Jake Film Finance, Media House Capital and the Melbourne International Film Festival's MIFF Premiere Fund. Media House Capital's Aaron L. Gilbert, Jake's Joan Peters, Azurite Capital's Jack Drewe, Jed Weintrob, Ian Gibbins and Bryce Menzies are executive producers. Margot Hand and Patrick Murray are co-executive producers.