JOHN COLLEE
Bismarck
Writer
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Written for Steven Spielberg as a co-production bewteen Fox and Dreamworks, this was an original screenplay based on true events. The Bismarck was Hitlers equivalent of the Death Star - bigger, faster and more accurate than any U-boat, and capable of sinking any Allied warship that came within range. With it he aimed to close down the convoy routes across the Atlantic.
Apart from its sheer size, Bismarck's key advantage was a sort of proto-computer - which could land a shell with pinpoint accuracy on a moving enemy vessel beyond the horizon.
My heroes were the Jewish-German maths genius who operated this device, the patriotic/conflicted captain of the Bismarck and the insanely brave pilots of torpedo-carrying wire and canvas biplanes which were Britains only hope against superior German technology.
Burton
Writer
Biopic of the Victorian Explorer, convicted "pornographer" and expert linguist Sir Richard Burton - translator of 1001 Nights, the first European to enter Mecca, and co-discoverer of the source of the Nile.
I wrote this for director Scott Hicks who grew up in Africa and has always been a fan of Burton ... as I am.
Black Honeymoon
Writer
A Hitchcockian thriller, inspired by a trip I took to Congo Brazzaville with Paul Greengrass when we were both young and foolish.
Martin Brown and I later took a research trip to Tanzania, reckoning we could film the river boat sequences on the shores of Lake Victoria.
Ex president President Jawardene Kikwete met us and gave the project his blessing - lovely guy.
Dirt Music
Earlier screenplay
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Phil Noyce had the rights to this book for many years. Justin Monjo wrote a draft which Pip Karmel then revised.
Finally Russel Crowe was attached, but - being an accomplished musician - he wanted to play the hippy guitarist Lu Fox, rather than the tough professional fisherman who is the other part of the love traingle. Making the Lu character older and more proactive changed the dynamic of the story quite a bit and, in the end, Phil stepped away from the project.
Jack Thorne later adapted the book with Tim Winton and the film was directed by Gregor Jordan
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The Drowner
Writer
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An adaptation of the Australian goldfields novel by Robert Drewe. Comissioned by Stephen Van Mil with Fred Schepsi slated to direct.
Steve raised development money from a number of investors at the height of the Western Australian mining boom, but it's an expensive and difficult movie for a first time producer - with a large ensemble cast, a remote period setting, and a multi-stranded plot line.
When Steve reluctantly abandoned it, the book rights reverted to Robert Drewe.
Fairweather's War
Writer
From the novel "Season of the Jew" by Maurice Shadbolt.
In 1868, former British Army officer George Fairweather resigns his commission to be a watercolourist in New Zealand.
But a violent uprising led by his one-time friend - the charismatic Maori preacher Ti Kooti - drags Fairweather back into the action, defending the settlers whom he largely despises and the Maori woman whom he and Ti Kooti both love.
In Love and War
Writer
The story of a semi-fictional platoon in the gruelling desert war of 1941.
The story is framed within the remarkable wartime love story of Phil Noyce's parents. (Thats his mother in the photo).
Phil Noyce to direct.
Jonah
Writer
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Magical-realist story about a fractured family and the rescue of a stranded whale. Co-written with french director Philippe Muyl for Philippe to direct.
Just Cause
Writer
Screenplay for a big budget action movie based on the popular video-game. Avalanche Studios and Warner Brothers . Brad Peyton was originally slated to direct.
A Koala in Queens
Writer
Rewrite of an earlier draft by Jim Piddock and Simon Kelton.
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The story is of an animal smuggler who is transformed into a koala by an irate Aboriginal magician and then exported to America. A resourceful young girl releases him from a New York zoo and undertakes to help change him back into a human .... but first she has to get a live, stolen, English-speaking koala back through customs to Australia.
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Michael Thurmeier slated to direct .
The Land at the End of the World
Writer
Co-written with director Kim Morduant for producer Sylvia Wilczynski
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Disenchanted expat Soldier joins an all female team of bomb disposal experts in Angola.
Mattias Schoenarts to co-star with Tom Hardy's production company co-producing.
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Little Dragon
Writer
Bruce Lee started out a teenage tearaway and dance champion in 1950's Hong-Kong - a city crammed with refugees from the Chinese Communist Revolution and divided by gang warfare.
This film about Bruce Lee's early years got tantalisingly close to being shot with Shannon Lee coproducing and Shakhur Kapur directing, but there was an unfortunate last- minute hiccup with the finance and the whole project went South.
One Crowded Hour
Writer
Biopic of combat cameraman Neil Davis, co-written with director Kiim Morduant and based on the biography by Tim Bowden
Ocean Warriors
Writer
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The story of the early days of Greenpeace
Onimusha
Writer
A rewrite for the late Sammy Hadida based on the video game
An earlier draft was written by Canadian writer Lesley Krueger
Christophe Gans was attached to direct this version and Andrew Mason to co-produce. We got as far as set design, computer generated "previz" (pre-visualisation) and making the costumes, with Japanese financiers heavily invested, but then, as an indirect consequence of Heath Ledger's death, the European finance fell through - it happens sometimes...
Ripley's Believe it or Not
Writer
Written for Universal, Christopher Columbus was originally slated to direct.
A story inspired by the life story of Robert Ripley, a 30's journalist and illustrator tasked by Randolph Hearst to document the bizarre and the magical, wherever in the world he could find it.
Sunstroke
Writer
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Written with Vincent Perez and Karine Silla for Vincent Perez to direct, Jeremy Thomas producing
The Sixteen Pleasures
Writer
Comissioned by Jane Berliner and based, rather loosely, on the novel by Robert Hellenga. A repressed American book restorer arrives in Florence, Italy to restore flood damaged books in a nunnery.
While dismantling shelves to release the damaged, swollen manuscripts she discovers find hidden away, a 15th century illustrated erotic masterpiece called "The Sixten Pleasures" . The nuns want to disown the book and certain powerful individuals within the Vatican want it destroyed. It may be a valuable work of art, but it also depicts the love life of a former Pope.
Tamara
Writer
The story of artist Tamara di Lempicka co-written with playwright Joanna Murray-Smith and director Vittoria Colonna
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Touching the Void
Writer
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A dramatisation of the classic mountaineering book by Joe Simpson, unrelated to the excellent docu-drama by Kevin MacDonald.
The movie cuts between Joe's extraordinary physical ordeal and the survivor guilt of his climbing partner Simon, who, recovering in base camp, tries to figure how he will break the news back home that he killed Joe and left his body on the mountain.
As part of the research for this, I spent time with Joe and Simon, and also took an ice-climbing course in the Torridan mountains in Scotland, discovering new and interesting things about the pyschology of fear.
Trumped
Writer
I wrote this for Scottish producer Christopher Young, based on "You've Been Trumped", the excellent documentary by Anthony Baxter about Trump's attempts to create an exclusive golfcourse development on coastal farmland near Aberdeen, regardless of the wishes of the people who lived there.
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My draft was perhaps a bit too true to life. The ideal version would be be slightly more heavily fictionalised in the style of Local Hero, but having got to know all the real-life characters - including Michael Forbes, pictured - it was hard for me to re-imagine them as anything other than themselves, so I passed it on to another writer.
