Toni Collette’s directorial debut The Best Of is one of 42 productions to share in Screen Australia’s $1.6million of Development Funding announced yesterday.
14 feature films, eight online projects and 20 television dramas received the latest funding round, the last awarded in the 2019/20 financial year.
Collette’s The Best Of is a romantic comedy based on Graeme Simpson’s book of the same name, and is set to be adapted for screen by comedian and writer Mark Watson.
Per a synopsis, the film “follows amateur musician turned IT specialist Adam Sharp who has a stable, unexceptional life with his matter-of-fact wife Claire”.
“When his first love, Angelina, gets in touch with an offer of reuniting, Adam must choose between the fantasy of a life unlived and the reality of his marriage in its quiet beauty”.
In response to a Mediaweek article announcing the film, Watson tweeted the film is “still 11 steps from actually getting made”, joking that he shared it anyway because “what’s the use of being strung along by this business if you can’t occasionally look good to your mum”.
Re the implausible Watson/Collette team-up in the last RT – I should say, it's probably still 11 steps from actually getting made, but what's the use of being strung along by this business if you can't occasionally look good to your mum.
— Mask Watson (@watsoncomedian) August 5, 2020
Among the television projects is New Animal, a new six-part dramedy series from writer Marieke Hardy. Based on an as-of-yet unpublished novel by Ella Baxter, the series follows a 28-year old comestician working at a family funeral parlour who is unexpectedly drawn into the local BDSM community when her mother dies.
An adaption of writer Maxine Beneba Clark’s debut fiction collection Foreign Soil has also been given TV funding.
A full breakdown of the Screen Australia-funded television, online and feature film productions is here.