Faraway Downs Turns Baz Luhrmann’s Australia Into A Miniseries This November
It’s a bit of a trend in Hollywood these days to turn films into TV shows. With the high budgets of TV and streaming, we’ve seen new versions of Fatal Attraction, Dead Ringers and soon Mr & Mrs Smith, allowing for more in-depth retellings of old favourites.
Baz Luhrmann, of Romeo + Juliet and Elvis fame, is trying a slightly different angle. The Hollywood director is releasing a newly expanded version of his 2008 epic Australia, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, using both footage from the original and new material to create an extended limited series, titled Faraway Downs.
What is Faraway Downs?
Retitled Faraway Downs, this new version of Australia will be six episodes long, with Luhrmann describing it as “a new variation on Australia for audiences to discover.”
Set in Australia in WW2, it focuses on a blossoming romance between Lady Sarah Ashley (Kidman), the inherited owner of the Faraway Downs cattle ranch, and The Drover. Jackman plays The Drover, a ranch worker who pledges to protect her property from tycoons looking to buy up the ranch.
Compared to his other films, the 2008 film went a bit under the radar, with critics being a bit mixed in opinions. Faraway Downs hopes to expand the story and give new depth and weight to the story and characters to make a better version of the film for our more binge-watching age.
What else do we know?
The miniseries will reuse footage from the original, which presumably means both what was already released and deleted scenes, as well as adding new perspectives to the story. One plotline Faraway Downs will expand upon is the story of Nullah, an Aboriginal boy who is biracial and experiences the brunt of the Australian government’s policies separating Aboriginal children from their families.
Lurhmann also promises that the new version of the film will include “new plot twists” that became possible with a longer form serialised format, as well as a different ending to the original.
Faraway Downs is set to feature a new soundtrack- the original featured several jazz standards as well as the Elton John song ‘The Drover’s Ballad’, but we don’t know yet if anyone else is recording new material for the series.
Who else stars, and is there a release date?
There have been no announcements of any new casting for the series, but Australia also starred an Australian cast of Ben Mendelsohn, David Wenham, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson and Brandon Walters in addition to Kidman and Jackman. Faraway Downs is set to arrive on Disney+ in the UK later this year in November, and while we don’t have any clips yet, you can watch the trailer for Australia below.
