“Shoot Me a Croc Picture – Make it Snappy” - Weinstein

Still from Rogue The atmosphere is dark, dismal and claustrophobic. From the cave roof, water drips and trickles underfoot. The noxious odour of rotting bones fills the fetid air. Meanwhile, leaves swirl gently on the surface of a filthy swamp. A young woman lies unconscious at the water's edge, one leg badly gored, a raw and bloodied chest. In her arms, a torn, ripped life jacket.....  Greg McLean, Rogue's writer director

Not a Hollywood studio set, but a carefully built construction in Maidstone, Australia. The cave is hessian-covered steel and spray painted cement, specially built for the feature Rogue, backed by Hollywood executive producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein through their company Dimension Films.


Rogue is the second feature to come from the pen of writer-director Greg McLean, who launched his film career with low-budget horror Wolf Creek, which grossed over $6 million at the Australian box office and $25 million in the US, making it the most successful Australian film of 2005.

SUCCESS BREEDS SUCCESS


That success has brought McLean a much bigger budget to play with; Rogue has a budget of $25 million, compared with $1.38 million for Wolf Creek.

Rogue still

McLean, 34, is frank in his admission that for him it is a dream situation. "It's not very often that a second-time filmmaker gets that kind of budget and the final cut on the film and has complete control over the key credit cast," he says.

ROGUE ISLAND


Rogue tells the story of a group of tourists stranded on a tidal island. There is one other, very nasty, inhabitant. The story is a classic man-versus-beast tale, filmed on location in the Northern Territory.

Pete (American actor Michael Vartan of the television series Alias) is a journalist who is in Australia to research a travel book. He takes a tour boat, guided by Kate (Radha Mitchell of Melinda and Melinda) going into some very remote country, but when the boat breaks up he is thrust into the role of reluctant hero.


The money has funded the production of spectacular sets, including a 40-metre-long island, as well as allowing the use of high-end special effects to create a terrifyingly real, computer-generated crocodile more than six metres long.


McLean wrote the script in the early '90s, with a first draft taking five weeks, then spent the next years trying to get it made. His first low budget success, Wolf Creek was the key which opened doors for him.

 TOURIST KILLER

"Because Wolf Creek is a horror film as well, it was very easy to get up another horror film. People want to see the next film that this group of people could do in the same vein," McLean says.


McLean scoffs any suggestion that he is bent on damaging the Australian tourism industry; first with a story of an outback serial killer in Wolf Creek and now a blood thirsty croc.


"I actually think it will have the opposite effect," he says. "The statistics on these attacks in the Northern Territory show that every time there's a crocodile attack that makes world headlines, the tourism increases by $20 million a year."

SHOCK HORROR!


McLean's producer, Matt Hearn, acknowledges that Rogue, set for release next year, will not be for the faint-hearted. "In this movie, it's a very large beast acting the way a very large beast does, so there's definitely moments of intense horror and shock," he says.


Filming was a challenge in crocodile-infested waters with more than 80 cast and crew. Armed Northern Territory national park rangers accompanied them everywhere, but this brought only minimal comfort. As MacLean explained; "We had guys with guns but they said: 'If we ever need to get this gun out, you're pretty much gone."

MAKING A SPLASH


On the second day of filming, Will Gibson, director of photography toppled overboard. "The boat hit an underground root and consequently both the camera and I toppled head first into the drink," he says.


"My first thought was to get the camera out and then I was in such a head spin I passed the camera back to someone and just slumped back into the water. It took Radha Mitchell, the star… to yell: Rogue on location, Australia's Northern Territories'Get out of the bloody water, you idiot' and thankfully that jerked me back to consciousness."

The camera, worth about $100,000, was destroyed.