Robert Connolly

When you live in Beulah, you don't have a doctor.

But Beulah does have a place in Australian cinema, thanks to the author Jane Harper and film director and writer Robert Connolly.

His hit movie, The Dry, starring Eric Bana as a federal agent returning to his hometown to try to solve a murder mystery, was filmed in and around Beulah.

It was a great movie with some killer lines.

And there are a lot of films that are made for the streamers, but those films by and large will not be screened in any theatrical setting.

So we have situations where, you know, films like Rob Connolly's The Surfer starring Nicolas Cage, big time movie star.

It's really epic film.

It's all shot on the coast of Western Australia.

So where are these films going to get made? Well, we've got two perfect examples coming through in production this year, both of which will be released over the next six months, both of which have incredible creative ambition, scale and production values.

And I'm referring, of course, to Rob Connolly's Shiver and also to Jen Petum's Tenzi.

They're exactly the kind of films that should be in our cinemas, that audiences would actually pay good money to see.

It's doubtful whether they actually will because, of course, the only way to get those two films made was with streamer investment.

It is produced by Christina Caton, Samantha Jennings, Hannah Neen, Executive produced by Salman Al Rashid...

Robert Connolly...

Simone Frazier...

Sam Froman...

And so he's done a couple things.

He did The Dry with me, with Rob Connolly, and then he did Transfusion that I, that I directed.

And, you know, he, he's showing some real interest.

Yeah.