Talking about “Faraway Downs,” dorky DiCaprio, and why he wouldn’t film a Madonna biography following “Elvis,” Baz Luhrmann
Baz Luhrmann followed a different hobby, turning his 2008 feature film Australia into the six-chapter saga Faraway Downs, which is currently streaming on Hulu. While the rest of the world spent our collective COVID-19 pandemic-caused lockdown growing sourdough starters or getting really into puzzles, Luhrmann did the opposite. Don’t mistake this fresh rendition for Luhrmann’s director’s cut of the classic Outback romance, which stars Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman as squabblers to lovers whose passion crosses a class and continent. “That’s a director’s cut, I guess,” the Australian director of Moulin Rouge and Elvis says to Yahoo Entertainment.
“I understand people thinking that, but it’s not true at all,” he says. “It’s an experiment, and depending on how it goes it might have implications for other filmmakers going forward, as well as implications for the relationship between the theatrical experience and the episodic experience.”
There are other directors than Baz Luhrmann who have experimented with making distinct versions of a same film for cinemas and streaming platforms. A four-episode extended version of Quentin Tarantino’s 2015 Western, The Hateful Eight, was already cut for Netflix, while Ridley Scott is preparing a lengthier version of his historical epic, Napoleon, produced by Apple TV+, for its streaming premiere. However, Faraway Downs is arguably the most ambitious iteration of this endeavor, as Luhrmann reimagines a familiar yet fresh tale from 2.5 million feet of film he shot fifteen years ago.