Sydney - Baz Luhrmann's epic Australia is being beaten at
the box office in its home country by Kung Fu Panda and five other
films, figures released Sunday show.
The 165-minute marathon starring locals Nicole Kidman and Hugh
Jackman is unlikely to stay in Australian cinemas beyond the end of
the month, a spokesman for Greater Union told Sydney's Sunday
Telegraph.
'It didn't appeal to the greater audience at all,' said Louis
Youssef.
The failure of a film four years in the making that was intended
to be an Oscar contender is a big blow for Canberra, which put up an
estimated 25 per cent of its 150-million-US-dollar budget and geared
a tourism promotion campaign around it that it hoped would arrest a
decline in international arrivals.
Sportingbet and Centrebet, the country's two biggest internet
betting agencies, are not taking bets on Luhrmann's melodrama winning
an Oscar because the odds are stacked so high against success.
Twentieth Century Fox remains hopeful that the most expensive film
ever made in Australia will recoup its costs - despite slow ticket
sales in the United States and disappointing sales since it opened in
Australia five weeks ago.
The studio is pinning its hopes on Europeans being drawn to an old
fashioned film that parades the wonders of the Australian Outback. It
was the top film when it opened in Germany, France and Spain - and
came in third in Britain.
'As an anchor of Australia's tourism campaign, this film has not
been nearly as strong as the government made out it would be,' said
opposition Liberal Party arts spokesman Steven Ciobo. He castigated
the government for keeping the exact size of its investment in
Australia a secret.
Critics have given mixed reactions to the World War II romance,
saying that Luhrmann's his first feature since 2001's successful
Moulin Rouge! tries too hard to please everyone.
'Luhrmann needs a complete break,' David Thomson wrote in London's
Guardian, 'and I would suggest that he might try to make a new kind
of musical, in circumstances where budget limits stimulate invention
rather than dragging it down.'
USA
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