16 December, 2013 – Screen Australia today announced funding support for WASTELANDER PANDA, a multimedia project consisting of six TV/online episodes, a graphic novel and interactive website. Production will be supported by the ABC, with the episodes to premiere on the iView platform in 2014.
WASTELANDER PANDA will commence production in March 2014 and will be shot in South Australia. The project is a co-production between Madman Production Company and Epic Films. This marks the first project from Madman Production Company to receive production investment since the company’s establishment in 2012.
The team behind WASTELANDER PANDA includes writer/director Victoria Cocks, producers Kirsty Stark (Epic Films) and Nick Batzias (Madman Production Company), and additional writers Mike Jones and Matt Vesely.
Writer/director Victoria Cocks commented “After creating previous versions of WASTELANDER PANDA independently over the past two years, we feel extremely fortunate to be working alongside Madman, and to have Screen Australia and the ABC believe in the project as much as we do. I’m looking forward to going back to the Wasteland.”
Head of Madman Production Company Nick Batzias commented “It’s incredibly exciting to be able to announce WASTELANDER PANDA as our first project out of the gates. We’ve been busy behind closed doors working on this and a number of other properties on our slate, and hope to be able to announce a number of projects from Madman Production over the next 12 months.”
The new project from the team behind WASTELANDER PANDA follows a three-minute Prologue released online in 2012, which has accumulated over 100,000 views. Since releasing this initial Prologue, the team successfully raised over $25,000 via a Pozible campaign, completed three further online episodes and presented a panel on the series at South by Southwest.
Development and production partners include Screen Australia, The South Australia Film Corporation, Epic Films and Madman Production Company.