Despite rumblings that Australia director Baz Luhrmann was having second thoughts about his long-gestating take on F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, he’s now locked it in as his next project and announced that not only will he film it down under at Fox Studios Sydney, but it’ll also be in 3D. Yep, 3D.
While the format has been spreading across most genres thanks to the likes of Martin Scorsese embracing it, Gatsby is a very different prospect from most of the movies that have been shot in the extra dimension. But then, this is Baz Luhrmann we’re talking about, a man who delights in finding new ways to push the visuals and emotions in his films.
And it’s not like he doesn’t have a killer cast to shoot with – Tobey Maguire is in to play the film’s narrator/central figure Nick Carraway, Leonardo DiCaprio is the enigmatic and ultimately tragic Gatsby and Carey Mulligan is attached as the haunted, beautiful Daisy Buchanan.
As for the Aussie setting, the Warner Bros. production was apparently lured by tax incentives and a deal with the New South Wales government. Luhrmann also has a history with the locale, having shot both Australia and Moulin Rouge at the Fox Studios.
While the director gathers the rest of his cast and starts preparing sets and designs for the film based on the script adaptation he wrote with Craig Pearce, he’ll kick off early work in March and aims to shoot in August.