History bites in new vampire drama

When Warwick Thornton learned that smallpox had decimated indigenous populations after the arrival of the First Fleet he got angry.

Especially when he realised it had been brought here through vials. Historians have debated whether it was biological warfare, but Thornton is in no doubt.

“There’s only one reason why you bring smallpox vials to a new country and to an indigenous community that’s obviously been isolated from the rest of the world for a very long time,” he tells TV Tonight.

“They did it to North America, they did it to the Chinese, they did it to the Indian people.”

“We’re looking for bigger audiences and being smart about how to entertain and educate”

Rather than simply dramatise the viewpoint literally, he flipped it with a contemporary switch: smallpox was substituted for vampires, in a new series Firebite, co-created with Brendan Fletcher.

“If Brendan and I were to make a period film set in 1788 it’d be a very dark and worthy movie. It would kind of go down the Samson & Delilah track. A smallpox movie would be a great festival film at Cannes. But we’re looking for bigger audiences and being smart about how to entertain and educate.”

It was an idea that grabbed Fletcher from the get go when he first heard it in 2014.

“All of a sudden, my brain just exploded,” Fletcher recalls. “We actually wrote the first draft of episode one in 2014.

“I really love the collision of vampires and indigenous cultural history, or the colonisation story of Australia. I love the idea of taking the serious themes of that, and treating it like an action / comedy film. As filmmakers we’re attracted to bold ideas and fresh ideas and you get a lot of freshness by colliding genres.

“So it’s exciting that everything is happening now but this has been a long time coming.”

The 8 part series, produced by See-Saw Films, was filmed in Coober Pedy, where Thornton had filmed previously. Its opal mining history and landscape allows for a unique take on the vampire genre in a way only Australia could deliver. The vampires hide underground by daylight, emerging safely to the surface under dark of night.

“There are literally 240,000 abandoned mine shafts all around the town”

“Coober Pedy has been pillaged by people looking for opals for 100 years. There are holes all around town, in a population of probably only 3000 – 4000. There are literally 240,000 abandoned mine shafts all around the town. As you’re flying in, it’s like a massive piece of Swiss cheese and these holes are seriously deep. If you walk backwards and fall in one, there’s no way you’re going to be found,” Fletcher continues.

“We’re used to Bram Stoker’s Dracula as being in a castle, or the Twilight vampires being in a North American architecturally designed house. What we’re not used to in Australia is turning the vampire dungeon or the vampire Castle into an underground lair. We’re literally inverting the castle so it’s underground in the holes dug by the mining industry.

“No matter how hard we try and just have fun on this show, there’s always meaning beneath it.”

The story centres around two Indigenous Australian hunters, Tyson (Rob Collins) and Shanika (Shantae Barnes-Cowan), on their quest to battle the last colony of vampires in the middle of the South Australian desert. The series also stars Yael Stone, Callan Mulvey, Kenton Pell amongst others.

Thornton and Fletcher also arrived at their own take on the vampire lore, to fit with the Australian experience.

“They’re darkness-dwelling creatures and that made the tunnels work”

“It’s a balance between taking what you want from Gothic vampires, and reinventing it in such a way that you don’t break it, but you make it part of your world. We didn’t like the idea, necessarily, that garlic or crucifixes or anything like that, repelled them. That seemed to be from a different reality. But obviously, they’re darkness-dwelling creatures and that made the tunnels work,” says Fletcher.

“The other idea we really liked was that when you get bitten, you lose everything – all of your identity, your memories, your sense of self, disappears very, very quickly, and you’ve got to fight to get it back. That has some pretty big parallels regarding colonisation. It’s like a colonisation of the body.”

“It’s smart to adapt. Aboriginal people have to adapt,” Thornton adds. “We are who we were 200 years ago, and I think it’s the same with vampires. Any feral animal that came to Australia has to adapt to the Australian climate -let alone our psyche- to actually survive. That’s what I like about our vampires, in a sense, they’ve adapted.

“There’s a lot of garlic in Australia! We’re very multicultural with our food so they’d have to get over that one pretty quickly.”

The series screens in Australia exclusively through AMC+, who will also take the series to the world. Producers are hoping if it works there it will be a returning series.

“We’ve got three seasons in mind. We’ll see what happens. It’s a little bit up to the algorithms of the world, but we’ve a sense of where it goes from here,” Fletcher remarks.

“This is super Australian, super black, and super original”

“I’m so proud of the fact that we haven’t had to compromise any of the language or the way that we’ve staged the scenes. AMC are after unique voices. They’re after filmmakers that don’t just bring a genre story, but (one) from a unique perspective.

“This is super Australian, super black, and super original. And that’s something that we’re really proud of.”

Firebite will premiere December 16 exclusively on AMC+, the new streaming bundle available via Amazon Prime Video Channels and Apple TV Channels.