Russell Crowe - The Prose & the Passion

The Long Green Shore

Production Company: Intermedia Films (Sliding Doors, Hilary and Jackie) (Russell Crowe is also producing)

Cast: Russell Crowe, Ron Howard; other cast not announced yet (and it's as yet unclear which of the several lead roles Crowe is taking; possibly a commander).

Director: Russell Crowe (debut)

Screenwriters: Bob Ellis (The Nostradamus Kid; co writer of Man of Flowers, News front) (first draft); rewrite by Russell Crowe (debut)

Based upon: The novel of the same title by the late Australian author John Hepworth. Ellis was a friend of Hepworth's. The novel was written in 1946, but not published in novel form until 1995 (first published as a serial in The Sunday Herald in late 1949).

Premise: Set in mid-1945 after V-E Day, but before the fall of Japan, this is the story of an Australian battalion sent to New Guinea to force the beleaguered Japanese to retreat. What they find when they arrive is a land covered with the corpses of Americans and Japanese soldiers from previous battles and starving and pitiful Japanese soldiers who regardless continue to fight to the bloody end, forcing some of the Australian soldiers to ponder the meaning (or meaninglessness) of war... (sounding a bit like an Australian take on The Thin Red Line, complete with narration and meditative philosophical prose).

Filming: Production is scheduled to start late 2002, or possibly early 2003, (pushed back from the spring, 2002) in the South Pacific (presumably including Papua New Guinea), after Russell Crowe wraps up filming of The Far Side of the World.

Upcoming Movies