[Movies] Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea May Shoot In Australia
Posted by Joseph Lee on 02.15.2013
If Australia has its way...
The Daily Telegraph (Via The Hollywood Reporter) reports that Disney's remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea may shoot in Australia.
The government of Australia is willing to offer Disney a 30% locations rebate worth about $19.2 million to shoot there this year. Disney executives met with federal arts minister Simon Crean in Canberra yesterday to finalize the details before the production is greenlit. Crean has given government approval for the deal. Local reports that Brad Pitt will star in the film are false.
Disney location scouts are considering the Village Roadshow Studios in Queensland (where Terra Nova was made) and Fox Studios in Sydney (where The Wolverine was filmed, the biggest ever made there).
The film is another adaptation of the book by Jules Verne, originally a film in 1954. David Fincher will direct. The film is expected to exceed the 2,000 local jobs created during The Wolverine, which brought in $80 million in local investment and contracted 850 local companies. The Australian locations incentive has a 16.5% tax rebate for foreign productions, but Wolverine was given a 30% incentive in a one-off deal. Locations marketing agency Ausfilm are lobbying the government to increase it to 30% permanently. Because of the strength of the Australian dollar against the US dollar, there have been few productions of big-budget films in the country.
