Hollywood’s Biggest Stars Really Don’t Wanna Come To Australia To Make Movies, Guys

You may remember back in April, the Federal Government announced that it was putting aside $21.6 million of your hard-earned tax money in order to entice Walt Disney Studios, director David Fincher (Fight Club, The Social Network) and actor Brad Pitt to shoot their proposed big budget re-make of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea in Australia.

“The securing of this film is a huge coup for the Australian film industry and for the near 1000 local businesses that will be providing goods and services for the film,” said then-PM Julia Gillard at the time, and we all cheered, because finally we’d all get a chance to make-out with Brad Pitt or something. It’s a bit like the pride local audiences currently feel when watching Pacific Rim and seeing the giant kaiju stomping all over Sydney’s Castlereagh Street. We’re important enough to be trampled to smithereens in a Hollywood movie, hooray!

Well, anyway, that’s not happening anymore.

Following an announcement last month that Brad Pitt passed on the film’s lead role to focus instead on the WWII ensemble project, Fury, comes today’s news that David Fincher has also left the production to focus on his upcoming adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s best-selling novel, Gone Girl, and the whole project is now pretty much dead in the water. No one likes us, yo.

According to Collider, Pitt  wasn’t the only superstar who hated us. Apparently, Matt Damon and Daniel Craig, who were approached for the lead role when Pitt pulled out, didn’t want to “commit to the 140-day shoot away from their families”, and producer Fincher didn’t exactly care for Disney’s casting suggestion of local boy, Chris Hemsworth. In summary, the whole project’s kaput.

And now, for the $21.6 million question: We didn’t actually give them all that money already, did we? And, if so, how do we get it back? This is gonna be way harder than asking your housemates for toilet paper money. Good luck, government.