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Tim Winton joins Cloudstreet launch

The cast and crew of Showtime's Cloudstreet joined author Tim Winton for a media launch in Sydney.

The cast and crew of Showtime’s upcoming drama series joined author Tim Winton at Pyrmont’s Flying Fish restaurant last night for the launch of Cloudstreet.

In attendance were Steve Curry, Essie Davis, Geoff Morrell, Todd Lasance, Hugo Johnstone-Burt, Kelton Pell, joining director Matt Saville, Showtime’s Peter Rose and Kim Vecera, Des Monaghan and Greg Haddrick from Screentime, and Foxtel’s Brian Walsh.

The 6.5hr period drama is one of the most anticipated projects of the year, giving new life to a modern Australian classic.

“It is Tim Winton’s words that are the beauty behind the frame,” said Rose.

“Marking the the 20th Anniversary of this novel, we are honoured to be able to bring to the screen the realisation of Tim Winton’s iconic literary work.”

Monaghan praised director Matt Saville in bringing the work to the screen.

“It was an extraordinary privelege and also a somewhat terrifying prospect,” he said.

“I know after the show screens he will be scooped up by Hollywood and we’ll never hear from him again.”

“Never!” Saville shouted in reply. “We’ll do the sequel instead!”

The Sydney launch followed a launch in Perth last week, where the Screentime series was filmed.

A reluctant Winton, dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt, told the crowd, “20 years I guess in anybody’s professional life is a reasonable slab of having a go at things. it’s amazing for any novel to be in print after 20 years.

“Why it should still be in print and why people have such strong feelings about it is frankly beyond me. But I’m grateful.”

It is the first time Winton has adapted his own work for the screen.

“As I said in Perth, I hope I like it.”

Showtime is already attracting international interest for the series, including some bids purely on the basis of its trailer alone. It’s not hard to see why.

It premieres at 8:30pm Sunday May 22nd on Showcase.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O87sLAM2DYs[/youtube]

14 Responses

  1. Quite a lot of other australian produced pay tv shows and movies have been released on dvd instead of fta screenings, so I’m sure this will too. What’s the big deal with it being released on dvd over fta? 5 bucks for a rental is still better than the ridiculous monthly fees charged for subscription tv in this country and I doubt we’ll have to wait very long for it to be released on dvd if past examples are anything to go by.
    Either way, looks good and I hope it’s a rip-roaring fair dinkum aussie success story.

  2. @ Russell Premium drama content is the new battleground. STA will never let it go to FTA – it’s a big point of difference – a reason to compel people to subscribe. They can still try to recoup some of the budget from international sales and DVD sell thru.

  3. @Johnjet
    @matt
    @David Knox

    Why wouldn’t showtime / showcase want to make some $$$ by selling the FTA rights in a year or so?

    They could plough the $$ back into more original drama or their bottom line.

  4. If the promo is anything to go by, it will be stunning.
    I am sitting here in tears…but then, I was quite affected by the book. Looks like a truly brilliant screen adaptation.
    Time for a lobby to get this as a one-off special on FTA: all Australians need to see this.

  5. Thanks David was just about to ask about it on FTA. This cost a fair bit to film, so I guess they’re looking at any way to get the money back on it.

  6. Commercial FTA has abandoned premium drama because of cost. STV is the place for quality Australian drama as they have a spend requirement so they don’t mind spending more per hour. It’s a marketing point of difference for them now. The dinosaurs running FTA are not prepared to invest in premium drama – they think the numbers are not there to warrant the risk. I think it’s the wrong strategy. Cloudstreet would have rated on FTA, just like Paper Giants did -m but you need a Programmer to back it but sadly there’s no drama vision at FTA.

  7. Russell, shows like this are made specifically made for pay-tv, none of the commercial fta tv stations would of contributed any money to the making of it, so most unlikely it will appear on 7,9,10,2 or sbs (or any of the digital channels) any time soon. Sounds like this show will be one to wait for the dvd release for people who don’t have film channels in their package or don’t have pay full stop.

  8. @Russell. Not going to happen. The only way FTA will ever be able to screen this is if Foxtel buys either 7, 9 or 10. And that’s not gonna happen anytime soon.

  9. Gosh I hope a FTA network picks this up (and other Showtime / Showcase series) as the premium pay channels get such small numbers.

    Surely this would be a perfect event for Gem?

    They could really get some huge numbers from something like this and re-launch the network.

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