Like many Baz Luhrmann movies before it, 2008’s Australia came under fire for being overlong, overindulgent, and regularly placing the focus on its sweeping visuals at the expense of its thematic core. 15 years later and the filmmaker will have the chance to write those wrongs, with a re-edited and extended version of the historical epic coming to Disney Plus next month as six-episode miniseries Faraway Downs.
First time around, the $130 million blockbuster could only bring in $211 million at the box office (only $49 million of which came from domestic screens) to go along with its lukewarm Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of 54 percent. Realistically, extending Australia could go either way, but Luhrmann revealed to The Wrap that he knows it isn’t his most beloved feature, which if anything has made him even more determined.
“What’s curious about Australia is it’s probably my least-loved movie in the U.S., but it’s still my biggest in Australia and in Europe. It’s still bigger than Elvis. When I made that film, I was trying to make a sort of twist, taking an old form – that would be the sweeping epic melodrama, something like “Lawrence of Arabia or Gone with the Wind” — and turn it on its head.
The thing about that is, you need a big canvas. In the process of making Australia, I really had to try to fit it into a not-epic box. It’s disjointed sometimes because I’ve had to compress the underlying themes and the epic nature of it. The thing that got me going about this idea of revisiting it was episodic streaming.”
Will the five-hour limited series complete with a new score and new ending rehabilitate Australia‘s reputation? Only time will tell, but you can’t fault Luhrmann for trying to right a wrong that’s clearly been bugging him for a while.