Alicia Malone
Update! : What wasn’t mentioned in the article was whether or not Stuart Beattie would be returning as director. We dropped Stuart a line and he was happy to confirm he’ll indeed be directing the next installment in the series.
A sequel to Paramount and writer/director Stuart Beattie’s “Tomorrow When The War Began” – the highest grossing Aussie film of 2010 – was as good as confirmed this weekend.
That’s great news for fans of the first film and, obviously, the books upon which the features are based (Clint and I, and most of the others here at Moviehole, weren’t young enough to be treated to the books in school – who you calling old, young fella!?)
The Sydney Morning Herald says the project will shoot in the state’s capital.
“I quite like this film. It’s about an insurgent force being led by a gutsy young woman fighting against an invading army,” Premier Kristina Keneally joked.
The film, like Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” (also filming in Sydney), will generate many jobs and pour a great wad of cash into the economy.
The first of two proposed sequels, the sequel, like the first, will be based on a John Marsden book. “The Dead of the Night” picks up right where the previous film left off.
The description from Amazon of ”Dead of the Night”
A few months have passed since Ellie and six of her friends returned from a camping trip deep in the Australian outback to find their country invaded by an unidentified, non-English-speaking nation. The Dead of Night opens with a brief recounting of what happened in the previous novel; two members of the group, Corrie and Kevin, are still missing. Homer, a self-appointed leader, rallies the others together to track them down. They discover that Kevin has been imprisoned, and Corrie is alive, but in a coma. The teens continue their guerrilla activities and, by the end of the story, have lost Chris, another comrade. As in Tomorrow, Ellie narrates and keeps a written record of the group’s activities and experiences. She is a fully realized character who grows considerably in the story. She is a thoughtful, realistic protagonist who wrestles not only with the brutalities of war, but also with her own adolescence. Her feelings for Lee are particularly well done. She wants to have sex with him, but worries about the complications that could result. These realistically depicted human conflicts make the book much more than just an exciting apocalyptic adventure. In the end, only four members of the original seven remain, but they are still committed to fighting the enemy. Hope is alive. Although this sequel can stand on its own, readers of Tomorrow will find it far more satisfying.
The movie sequel will film in September in the Hunter Valley and around the Blue Mountains.
