2013 – The year in box office
1. The Great Gatsby
Made with an estimated budget of $105m, The Great Gatsby grossed $346m worldwide with $27.3m of that coming from Australia alone. While it’s an impressive sum, the film has some way to go to top Australia’s biggest earner of all time, Crocodile Dundee, which took $47.7m at the local box office back in 1986. It also failed to beat two of Baz Luhrmann’s other films, Australia and Moulin Rouge, which grossed $37.5m and $27.7m respecti
2. Goddess
Directed by Mark Lamprell and featuring Australia’s favourite funny lady Magda Szubanski, Goddess made just $1.6m at the local box office which is probably the equivalent of the loose change Luhrmann has in his pockets post Gatsby.
3. Return to Nim’s Island
Bindi Irwin vehicle Return to Nim’s Island hit the wallets of Aussie parents to the tune of $1.2m. The 2008 original, Nim’s Island, made $37m worldwide.
4. Tim Winton’s The Turning
The centrepiece film of this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival, Tim Winton’s The Turning, made $1.15m during its run at the Aussie box office which is a decent sum given it was showing on fewer than 30 screens on any given weekend. An inflated ticket price of $25 helped the film to crack the $1m mark while a glossy book assisted audiences attempting to decode the three hour epic ‘cinema event’.
5. Drift
Not even Sam Worthington was enough of a draw for the Hopscotch-distributed film Drift. Shot on location in Western Australia, the surfing pic made just $931,419 locally before going straight to DVD or seeing limited and online release in the US and across Europe.
6. Satellite Boy
Catriona McKenzie’s Satellite Boy, featuring David Gulpilil, was the sixth highest grossing Australian film of the year making $510,034. The feature collected a swag of awards from the Berlin, Toronto and Palm Springs film festivals.
7. The Rocket
Festival favourite Kim Mordaunt’s The Rocket made $474,050 at the local box office and collected a number of awards including best debut, the Amnesty International Film Prize and the Crystal Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival as well as the audience award at the Tribeca Film Festival.
BOX OFFICE DATA COURTESY OF THE MPDAA
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Seriously, everyone knows The Great Gatsby isn’t really an Australian film, don’t they? A local director and filming it here doesn’t change the fact the three lead actors were all from overseas and it was financed by American money. And of course a very American tale based on a famous American novel.
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Australian cast. Australian crew. Australian location.
But it isn’t really an Australian fillum.
Yeah, nah…
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@Bobby, it’s hardly an Australian cast. DiCaprio, Maguire and Mulligan not really local names, are they? And shooting US-based scenes here with a largely local crew doesn’t qualify. If it did then everything from The Matrix to Superman returns would be deemed an Australian film.
If you don’t believe me then check out the international marketing. In every other country the film is sold as being a US production. Bottom line is who paid for it and in this case it was the Yanks.
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Key creatives and heads of department on “Gatsby” were local.
They weren’t on “Matrix” and “Supes.”
Marketing is irrelevant in this debate.
And clearly you missed the hullabaloo about the producer offset…
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@Bobby – with all due respect it is you who seems to have missed what went down with the producer offset. It was only Luhrmann’s fanciful claim that the film was “imagined” in Australia which allowed them to qualify for the rebate. A patently absurd decision by any measure. And you know as well as I do the fact the film is identified as American in every other market but here is not “irrelevant”.
My understanding is it is only people who worked on the film, or for Screen Australia, who genuinely cling to the little locally spun fiction that it is an “Australian” film. So congrats to you if you were involved. I liked the film. I just refuse to pretend it is Australian.
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