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Slap producers turn to youth drama

Matchbox Pictures, producers of The Slap, are devoping a new youth-oriented TV drama series called The Lost Boys.

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Matchbox Pictures, producers of The Slap, are devoping a new youth-oriented TV drama series called The Lost Boys for the ABC.

Created by Tony Ayres (pictured), it centres on four teenage boys who, after getting lost on a school camping trip, return home to find something strange has happened – they have come back to a world where they no longer exist.

The 13 x 30min series follows the four boys in their quest to find out what happened and reverse it so that they can return home.

Currently in development, the series will be produced by Michael McMahon & Tony Ayres and Executive Produced by Helen Panckhurst. Writers include Craig Irvin, Roger Monk, Shanti Gudgeon and Rhys Graham.

NBCUniversal International will also have rights to the series having invested in Matchbox Pictures mid year.

The series is one of 8 screen projects to join the inaugural Digital Ignition Multi-platform Clinic, a Screen Australia / StoryLabs workshop designed to support the development of production-ready multi-platform strategies. It will be held in the Southern Highlands of NSW, in late November.

In other Screen Australia news last week there were new ABC and SBS projects approved in the All Media Program :

Peleda
Vishus Productions
Online game and short animation series
Producer Luke Jurevicius
Writer/Directors Luke Jurevicius, Nathan Jurevicius
Game Developer Fiasco
ABC
Synopsis: Peleda is set in a highly stylised fantasy world that pits good against evil as players try to reclaim the land from an evil queen.

The Strange Calls
 Hoodlum
6 x half-hour comedy drama
Producers Tracey Robertson, Nathan Mayfield
Writer/Director Daley Pearson
ABC2
Synopsis: Hapless city cop, Toby Banks, is demoted to night duty in the sleepy beachside village of Coolum, only to find himself investigating strange late night phone calls that reveal the bizarre truth of the town – a place where men turn into chickens, mermaids fall in love with locals and cats return from the grave…

Wonderland
Chocolate Liberation Front
Interactive documentary
Producers Dan Fill, Frank Verheggen
Writer/Directors David Elliot-Jones, Lachlan McLeod, Louis Dai
Mentor Director Alex West
SBS
Synopsis: Wonderland explores the extraordinary and hard-hitting story of the sudden growth and subsequent implosion of Australia’s Indian student industry.

3 Responses

  2. I’m a bit disappointed with The Slap to be honest. I want to like it, I really do, but it’s too moody, too slow, too disjointed and too full of unnecessary tangents, plus I don’t think it respects the story’s core eruption of the actual slap enough. In the book, that incident is always there hovering and menacing over every page…but in a subtle way. They have also changed key moments in the book and the women come across as a boring bunch of elitist whingers…
    Plus I thought Alex D would be better and I don’t like the Hector guy in the role.
    Sorry! Just my opinion!

  3. Interesting series, The Slap… each episode must have a different director. The first eipsode was so over stylised (and slow and scattered) it almost lost me completely. But I did come back. Each week the show has got better and better. Last week’s with Alex Dimitriades’ character as the focus was brilliant. Glad I stuck with it and didn’t get slapped off by Ep 1.

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