Kriv Stenders, director of Red Dog, the eighth biggest Australian hit of all time in its home market, is attached to two of the 12 projects that have just received development money from Screen Australia.

They are the comedy Bad Angel, written by Snowtown writer Shaun Grant and about a New York hit man who learns about the effectiveness of love and family in a small rural Australian community, and the war drama Long Tan, an exploration of how about 100 Australian and New Zealand soldiers held off twenty-five times that number.

Also in the mix is I Am Jack, which has a theme of school-room bullying and is to be directed by the highly experienced Nadia Tass from a script adapted by author Susanne Gervay from her own novel.

Emile Sherman, one of the producers on best film Oscar winner The King’s Speech, is producing two of the 12 projects: Jan Sardi, the writer of Mao’s Last Dancer and Shine, is the scriptwriter on the action adventure Mulan;and Luke Davies, who wrote Candy, is the writer on the thriller Los Alamos, which has a disgraced intelligence operative at its heart.

Two biopics are also among the dozen films, on pop singer Michael Hutchence and on Neil Davis who spent 20 years filming in Asian war zones.

The federal government agency is also sending three writer/directors to the Binger Lab under its “talent escalator” initiative: Julietta Boscolo with Catching Sight about a blind woman who regains her sign; Cris Jones with Byzantine, about a young man trapped in a remote town after a car accident; and Vicki Sugars with U-Turn, about a 15-year-old who turns her family’s grief around when her sister is killed in a car accident.

This initiative will also see: producer Raquelle David spend six months in Toronto working with producer Niv Fichman at Rhombus Media; producer Natalie Wall spend six months at Ecosse Films in London; and writer/director Alex Murawski spend three months in LA with Australian director Bruce Beresford, who is working on Bonnie & Clyde.

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