22 01 2020 - Media release Screen Australia greenlights $3.5 million for 5 projects
amazing Grace
Nude retreats, marine poachers and hot-tempered chefs Screen Australia has announced two feature films, one television drama and two online projects that will share in $3.5 million of production funding.
Robert Connolly, writer/director of box office hit Paper Planes, returns to Western Australia for a feature film adaptation of Tim Winton's acclaimed novel Blueback; creator and star of Kiwi hit The Breaker Upperers Jackie van Beek joins forces with Australian producers to create absurdist dramedy feature Nude Tuesday; and Erik Thomson teams up with South Australian hit-makers Closer Productions to produce new TV comedy Yes, Chef!.
Screen Australia's Head of Content, Sally Caplan said, We are thrilled to be funding productions across four states and to be back collaborating with New Zealand on a co-production.
Blueback is a great Australian fable coming to the screen from local IP that will have global appeal. And we have been waiting for more comedies so we're delighted to get behind Yes, Chef! and Nude Tuesday.
We're also very pleased to provide two emerging teams with their first allocation of production funding through the Online fund. This avenue has proved to be an excellent way for creators to develop a profile and their audience, Caplan continued.
The funded feature film projects are
Blueback: A feature film based on the best-selling novel by Tim Winton, from the filmmaker behind Paper Planes, writer/director Robert Connolly with producers Liz Kearney and James Grandison of Arenamedia. The family-friendly film centres on Abby, a child who befriends a magnificent wild groper while diving. When Abby realises that the fish is under threat, she must take on the poachers to save her friend. Set on the coast of Western Australia and showcasing an extraordinary marine world, this is a story of friendship, family and nature. Blueback has also received principal production investment from the Western Australian Regional Film Fund (WARFF), supported by Royalties for Regions, and is financed with support from Screenwest and Lotterywest and Film Victoria.
Nude Tuesday: A co-production between Australia's Good Thing Productions and New Zealand's Firefly Films. Nude Tuesday is an absurd dramedy about couple Laura and Bruno who are on the brink of breaking up, and spend a week at a new-age retreat in a bid to save their marriage. What results is one of the most outrageous, emotionally confronting weeks of their lives. Written by Jackie van Beek (The Breaker Upperers), the film will be performed in a fictional language, and will be subtitled by comedic writers after filming to create a number of completely different versions of the same story. This is the second film directed by Armagan Ballantyne (after The Strength of Water in 2009) and will be produced by Virginia Whitwell and Nick Batzias whose credits include The Australian Dream, and New Zealand producer Emma Slade (Come To Daddy). The project has also received conditional production investment from the New Zealand Film Commission and is financed with support from Film Victoria.
The full list of feature film blocklines can be found here
Jackie van Beek and Armagan Ballantyne
The funded television project is
Yes, Chef!: A six-part dramedy series for the ABC from Closer Productions. It follows a notorious celebrity chef who is forced to flee to his hometown in the Adelaide Hills after his latest outburst goes viral. But when he forms an unlikely business partnership with his 18-year-old pastry prodigy niece, he must learn to navigate a whole new world order - except old habits die hard. The creative team includes creator/writer/executive producer Julie De Fina, creator/writer/producer Matthew Bate (Shut Up Little Man), producers Rebecca Summerton (The Hunting) and Erik Thomson, along with writers Matthew Vesely (F*cking Adelaide) and Jodie Molloy (TVNZ s Agent Anna). This project is financed with support from the South Australian Film Corporation. International sales will be handled by ABC Commercial.
The television drama blocklines can be found here
The online projects are
amazing Grace series 2: A five-part series for Facebook and other online platforms that follows teenager Grace as she navigates life after the death of her father, starring Justine Clarke and Ben Wood. Off the back of series 1, which was a finalist for Best Australian Drama at Melbourne Webfest in 2017, the second series will see Grace find solutions to more everyday challenges, aided along the way by the memory and advice of her dad. Based on her own life, this project is written by Grace Truman who stars as herself, and is written, directed and produced by Julie Money (Wonderland).
Sonia & Cherry: A seven-part comedy for Facebook and YouTube centred on two best friends who think they know each other until they become mums. While Cherry is into attachment parenting and sugar-free food, Sonia uses apps and feeds her kids whatever will keep them from complaining. The pair navigate their different approaches to parenting in this honest look at friendship after kids. This project is written and directed by Victoria Thaine and produced by Naomi Mulholland. Thaine also stars alongside Petra Yared and Dave Lawson.
The full list of online blocklines can be found here
Victoria Thaine
Related MaterialsDownload PDF
Media enquiries Jessica Parry | Senior Publicist
61 2 8113 5833 | 61 428 767 836 | [email protected]
Lidia Williams | Publicist and Events Officer
61 2 8113 1091 | 61 468 784 170 | [email protected]
All other general/non-media enquiries Sydney 61 2 8113 5800 | Melbourne 61 3 8682 1900 | [email protected]
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
22 01 2020 - Media release Screen Australia greenlights $3.5 million for 5 projects 
