Peter Weir has broken his six year film dormancy by kicking off principal photography on his next project, World War II Siberian exile epic The Way Back.
Starring bushy browed Colin Farrell, so-hot-right-now newcomer Jim Sturgess, the legend that is Ed Harris and Atonement's Saoirse Ronan, it is based on the acclaimed novel The Long Walk: The True Story Of A Trek To Freedom by Slavomir Rawicz. His book, along with a range of other accounts, chronicle the escape of a small band of multi-national prisoners from a Siberian gulag in 1940, and their epic journey over thousands of miles across five hostile countries.
Aussie director Weir has been nominated six times for Academy Awards, and has a CV boasting the likes of World War I drama Gallipoli which introduced newcomer Mel Gibson to the world, Witness with Harrison Ford, Dead Poets' Society, Green Card and Fearless starring Jeff Bridges.
But the much-lauded Weir likes to take his time between projects, with five years between The Truman Show and Napoleonic-era naval epic Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and now six years until The Way Back.
But at last, he has set the ball rolling again with the film shooting from this week on locations in Bulgaria, Morocco and India.