Stuart Beattie is attached as showrunner and Phillip Noyce as director to five-part limited series The Last Days of Saigon, set during the final days of the Vietnam War.
The project is based on the memoirs of journalist and former chief analyst of North Vietnamese strategy for the CIA in Saigon Frank Snepp, Decent Interval and Irreparable Harm. It promises never-before-seen perspectives of the North and South Vietnamese, Americans and Australians involved in the war.
The New York-based Chris Beale and Michael Kelleher of Ulladulla Films Australia optioned the books and will produce the series alongside Beattie via his company Foryor Entertainment.
The plan is to shoot in Australia, using primarily Australian actors, with some location shooting in South East Asia.
Beattie has returned to Australia to pen the project; he has written outlines for all five episodes and is currently writing the pilot script. After the pilot is completed, the producers will begin approaching potential studio and streamer partners, funding bodies and cast.
Kelleher brought the project to heavyweights Noyce and Beattie given their known interest in the Vietnam War. Noyce was the director of The Quiet American, which saw lead actor Michael Caine nominated for an Oscar, while Beattie was among the screenwriters of Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan.
Noyce told IF he and Beattie have been friends for more than a decade, with the two long looking for a project to collaborate on together. He also has a lot of admiration for Beale, arguing he represents “the next generation of emerging, dynamic Oz producers”.
“The story of Saigon’s fall is full of unbelievable twists and turns and extraordinary characters on all sides,” he said.
Beattie jumped at the chance to work on the project, having long been fascinated with the fall and evacuation of Saigon. Snepp’s books offered a true insider account of what was happening on the ground.
“The point of him writing his book was to get it all out in the open, in the hopes that we’d actually learn from our mistakes. But as we saw with the end of the war in Afghanistan, we just keep repeating these the same mistakes. We don’t learn our lessons. I think that’s really interesting to tell a story about something that happened 50 years ago but know just how much it resonates still today,” he told IF.
Beattie believes that a limited series, as opposed to a film, is the best way to tell this story, in that in will allow multiple perspectives, encompassing various militaries, refugees, diplomats, spies, and journalists. He argued that the series will take an even-handed approach to the war: “It doesn’t have a say on who’s right or who’s wrong.”
“Films are really one person’s story. Whereas television, you can get to tell multiple stories about multiple people. That was key for me because this wasn’t just an American, Australian or North or South Vietnamese experience. It was a lot of different people’s. I really wanted to this a multiple perspectives story,” he said.
This is the first official project for Ulladulla Films, which has a ‘local for global’ strategy, developing projects the global market that can take advantage of Australian incentives and co-production treaties. It also has a US arm, and plans to work across Australia, US and UK.
Seperately, Beale and Kelleher lead the Australian International Film Forum in NYC, Beale as chairman and Kelleher as executive director.
“[The Last Days of Saigon is] a gripping fast paced thriller that brings a new perspective to the events leading up to the collapse of Saigon and the disastrous evacuation that left so many people stranded,” said Beale.
“We’re delighted to have such iconic filmmakers working alongside us.”