WORD is that Clive Owen is to take the lead role of a single dad in Adelaide-based director Scott Hicks's The Boys are Back in Town, but producer Tim White has not confirmed this. The British actor (Gosford Park, The Bourne Identity, Children of Men) plays Walter Raleigh opposite Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth I in the upcoming The Golden Age. Hicks has not shot a film in Australia since Shine in 1995. The Boys are Back in Town will be made in Queensland, probably from mid 2007. The comedy-drama has been adapted from a book by British author Simon Carr and is a co-production with Tiger Aspect, one of the UK's biggest film and television producers. Billy Elliot is one of its credits. Hicks has shot three films since Shine, all in North America, although he brings them back to Adelaide for post-production. He is days away from finishing No Reservations, an English-language version of the German film Mostly Martha. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays the chef this time. Hicks made Snow Falling on Cedars and Hearts in Atlantis.

Capitol picks up 'Boys'
Hicks pic stars Owen
By ADAM DAWTREYCANNES — Capitol Films is selling worldwide rights to "The Boys Are Back in Town," an Australian movie directed by Scott Hicks and starring Clive Owen.
Pic is a co-production between Tiger Aspect Pictures and Southern Light Films, with backing from BBC Films and Film Finance Corp. of Australia. It's adapted by Allan Cubitt from Simon Carr's memoir of losing his wife to cancer and becoming the single parent of two boys.

Shooting is set to start in January.

A PLANNED Australian independent film looks like it will achieve the nearly impossible task of selling US distribution rights to a major studio before a single frame of film has passed through the camera.

The producers of The Boys are Back in Town, the first film to be shot in Australia by director Scott Hicks since he made Shine, are known to be in negotiations with Miramax, although they will not confirm it.

The distribution powerhouse owned by the Walt Disney Company was established by Bob and Harvey Weinstein.

The Boys are Back in Town is a drama adapted by Allan Cubitt from British author Simon Carr's memoir about a sports writer who, in tragic circumstances, becomes a single parent of two boys from different marriages.

Adelaide-based Hicks has cast Clive Owen as the father and most of the Australian-British co-production will be filmed in Queensland from early next year. Only a small component will be shot in Britain.

Owen was recently seen in Australian cinemas in Children of Men and will appear opposite Cate Blanchett in the upcoming The Golden Age.

Local producer Tim White is working on The Boys are Back in Town with British producer Greg Brenman from Tiger Aspect, a big British television production house that also made the feature Billy Elliot.

BBC Films and Film Finance Corporation Australia have contributed finance.

starring: CLIVE OWEN
Academy Award® nominee and BAFTA winner for Closer. Children of Men, Inside Man, Sin City, King Arthur. Upcoming in Universal’s Golden Age, New Line’s Shoot ‘em Up

SYNOPSIS
From the Academy Award nominated director of Shine, comes an inspiring, funny and poignant story of a father who discovers that parenthood is more complicated than just saying yes.

Sports writer Joe Warr, an Englishman living in Queensland, Australia, loves his wife Katy and their six-year-old son Artie. But father and son suffer a huge emotional upheaval in their lives when Katy suddenly dies. Rebuffing Katy’s mum’s suggestion that she look after the boy in the week while Joe is at work, the young widower says he’s determined to do it “my way”.

Joe tries to create a happy atmosphere in the home, even if that means French fries and ketchup for breakfast and mud on the carpet. “Hog heaven”, Joe calls it, but his attempts at macho bonding with his son can’t replace the emotional vacuum left by the loss of the little boy’s mother.Joe finds himself drawn to Laura, the single parent of one of Artie’s school pals, but on the night of his son’s riotous seventh birthday party he receives a call from his ex-wife Flicka, who lives back in England. The pair’s 14-year-old son Harry, who has never visited his father in Australia, would like to fly out after Christmas for an unspecified period.

Harry is initially fazed by the chaotic state of his father’s beachfront house, but soon finds himself testing the limits of even Joe’s tolerant attitude. Events spiral out of control when Joe’s boss pressures him into covering the Australian tennis open in Melbourne, and he leaves the boys behind for a few days. The older beach kids take advantage of Joe’s absence to have a riotous party at his home, and by the time Joe gets to hear his elder son’s increasingly desperate phone messages it’s too late: the police have intervened; Artie has been rescued by his maternal grandmother; and Harry has gone back to England.

Now separated once again by thousands of miles, Harry refuses to speak on the phone to his father. But having been absent for so long of the boy’s life, Joe is not prepared to accept their bond has been broken. If he’s ever to see his sons together under one roof again, he knows he must take dramatic action.

Acclaimed film director Scott Hicks has signed a deal to shoot and produce his next feature film in South Australia.

Hicks said the film, The Boys Are Back, would be shot largely in the wine growing area south of Adelaide, with work due to start in September.

Academy Award nominated British actor Clive Owen will take the lead role as journalist Joe Warr.

Hicks said he originally planned to make the film in Queensland but shifted production to South Australia following a $1 million investment from the South Australian government.

“I’m looking forward to showing the splendour of the Fleurieu (peninsula) to the wider world in the context of this powerful and emotional drama,” Hicks said.

The $18 million dollar The Boys Are Back will be Hicks’s first major film shot in Australia for about a decade.

Hicks gained international acclaim for the 1996 film Shine, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards, with Hicks receiving nominations for director and screenplay.

Source:The West