An indie filmmaker's dream: causing a sensation at Sundance and inking a multimillion dollar deal. The makers of "The Castle" did just that.
A modest Aussie comedy about a tow-truck driver fighting the system to save his home from an expanding international airport, pic was lauded as "an incredible effort" by Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein, who beat off rivals to sign a check for a reported $6 million for U.S. and selected foreign rights for the $450,000 pic.
But neither "The Castle" nor its makers, Melbourne's Working Dog, are unproven quantities. Pic was Oz's top-grossing local film of 1997, taking $7 million since its April preem via Roadshow Distributors, and just bowed with $185,000 on 25 New Zealand prints. Pic was also Oz's top renting video title over Christmas.
Sales agent Village Roadshow Pictures (VRP) has touted pic since May, but just about every major passed, although Paramount picked it up for South Africa and the U.K., where it bows in April.
"I can assure you there's lots of people reassessing their situation now," VRP prexy Greg Coote tells Variety. It's not the first time Working Dog struck a chord with the masses. The company's principals - Santo Cilauro, Jane Kennedy, Rob Sitch and Tom Gleisner met in the mid-1980s at student revues and became members of a live comedy ensemble called the D-Generation. During a tour, they were spotted by talent scouts for pubcaster ABC-TV, for whom they made three seasons of sketch comedy series "The D-Generation," which launched what has become one of Oz's most enduringly successful comedic teams.
After a stint hosting Melbourne's top-rated breakfast radio show came ABC-TV's live comedy variety show "The Late Show," the videos of which became the pubcaster's top-selling comedy titles ever.
But the quartet are best known for their bitingly incisive public affairs spoof "Frontline," which just finished a top-rated three-season run on ABC. Kerry Stokes' Seven Network has acquired rights to give the show its third run. Show's first season aired on U.S. cable net Comedy Central before PBS acquired all seasons to air with the title "Breaking News."
Dog's other ABC-TV shows included 1996's retro sleuth spoof "Funky Squad," which spawned a syndicated radio serial, and two seasons of comic travel-fishing show "A River Somewhere." The team is about to break into commercial TV with a live-to-air weekly comedy for Network Ten.
The quartet, who starred in most of the TV shows, insist on being left to their own devices to write, direct, produce and edit everything together, and are involved in all aspects of casting, shooting and publicity.
Such was the case with "The Castle," which saw them conceive a simple comedy that could be shot quickly and cheaply over 20 days. After completing a rough cut, pic was taken to VRP, which not only nabbed it, but signed the troupe to a three-pic first-look deal in exchange for domestic distribution and global sales rights.
Coote doubts the fuss will change their tightknit, thrifty ways. "It's not a megabudget world they live in, unless I've radically misjudged them all, and there's no pressure on them for their next project, except to hurry up!"