Toni Collette is set to make her feature-film directing debut with The Best Of, an adaptation of Graeme Simsion’s bestselling novel. The project is among 75 features, series and shorts included in a Screen Australia funding round worth more than AUD16.9 million (US$11.7 million) across production and development.
Collette will also produce the film alongside Christopher Simon. The Best Of follows two former lovers who unexpectedly re-enter one another’s lives after decades apart. Their renewed connection brings old feelings back to the surface, with complicated and mixed consequences. Screen Australia’s investment is being made with Screen NSW; Kismet is attached for Australian distribution, while Cornerstone holds international sales rights.
The project is a notable new creative role for Collette, whose screen career includes Emmy and Golden Globe recognition. Directing a feature means taking responsibility for shaping the film’s overall dramatic and visual approach: guiding performances, collaborating with department heads, determining how scenes are staged and assembled, and steering the adaptation from written material into a finished screen work. Collette’s producing role additionally places her among the people overseeing the project’s path to completion, alongside Simon.
A funding round spanning features, series and shorts
The 75 approved projects cover several stages of screen production. That distinction matters. Production funding supports a project moving into the process of being made, while development funding helps teams advance material before full production. Development can encompass activities such as writing, shaping a screen adaptation and putting together a viable creative package. The supplied project details do not establish release dates, casts or production-start dates for every title, so the funding news should not be read as a full schedule of imminent premieres.
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The selection ranges from literary adaptations and true-story drama to comedy, thriller television and animated family storytelling. That breadth is central to the round’s shape: established filmmakers and performers appear alongside emerging writers and short-film teams, while a number of projects draw from books, memoirs and audio storytelling.
Louise Gough, Screen Australia’s director of narrative content, described the supported slate as one that spans creators at different points in their careers and emphasized the appeal of distinctive Australian perspectives. The funding round arrives as a substantial pipeline rather than a single genre bet, with partnerships involving state agencies and a mix of distribution arrangements attached to particular projects.
For a closer overview of the funding slate, this report on the 75-project round outlines the central projects and scale of the investment.
Adaptations carry through the slate
The Best Of is not the only adaptation in the group. Brouhaha Entertainment is making The Dark Lake, a series based on Sarah Bailey’s award-winning novel. The story concerns a detective, played by Tonkin, in a rural town. Her inquiry into the death of a former high-school classmate brings personal secrets back into view. Troy Lum and Andrew Mason are producing, while Becca Johnstone writes and executive produces. Giorgia Stawaruk, Tonkin and Katarina Mandic are executive producers.
Screenwest is participating in the major production investment on The Dark Lake, which also has financing from Screen NSW. In practical terms, those regional partnerships show how a single screen project can draw support from more than one public screen body as it moves toward production.
Another major book-to-screen project is No Friend But the Mountains. Rodd Rathjen will direct the adaptation of Behrouz Boochani’s acclaimed memoir from a screenplay Rathjen co-wrote with Boochani. Its story follows a Kurdish journalist fleeing persecution who is intercepted at sea and sent to Manus Island, where he records the deterioration of the men detained there.
Gal Greenspan, Sharlene George, Amy Parry, Arkos Armont, Katy Roberts, Boochani and Antony Waddington are producers. The New Zealand Film Commission, Screen Queensland and VicScreen are partners on the project, and Madman is set for Australian distribution. The involvement of Boochani as a co-screenwriter is an important part of the adaptation’s stated creative structure, connecting the memoir’s author directly to the screenplay process.
Goalpost Pictures’ The Caretaker is also adapted from a bestselling novel, Gabriel Bergmoser’s book of the same name. Alexei Mizin and Ryan van Dijk are adapting it as a series after participating in Screen Australia’s 2026 Talent Gateway cohort. The thriller centers on a woman concealing herself as the off-season caretaker of a ski resort, then escalating to increasingly extreme actions in an effort to protect the life she has built.
Feature projects range from prison debate to neighborhood comedy
Jeffrey Walker is directing Bull, a working-title feature from Infin8 Studios and Total Fiction Films. Based on a true story, it follows a persuasive prisoner who joins a debating team at Tasmania’s harshest prison. He sees the team as an opportunity to redirect his life and, crucially, to become someone his mother can be proud of.
George Pullar stars, co-writes with Taylor Danworth and produces alongside Michael Lawrence, John Molloy and Suzanne Walker. The cast also includes Richard Roxburgh, Robyn Malcolm, Teresa Palmer, Thomas M Wright and Harrison Gilbertson. Screen Queensland is involved, while Kismet has local distribution and Cornerstone handles international sales.
Working title is an industry term for a temporary project name. It signals that the film is being developed or produced under that label, but it does not guarantee the eventual public title. In the case of Bull, the available information identifies the name specifically as provisional.
Sooshi Mango’s first feature is currently untitled. The comedy follows three stubborn Italian immigrants who rally their multicultural neighborhood after a mysterious wellness club threatens their much-loved social club. Nick Kozakis directs from a screenplay credited to Sooshi Mango members Joe Salanitri, Carlo Salanitri and Andrew Manfre, with Declan Fay.
Paul Dainty and Cathy Rodda produce, Timothy Whiting is co-producer, VicScreen is a partner and Roadshow has local distribution. The premise puts a community institution at the center of the conflict, using the arrival of the wellness club as the pressure point that prompts collective action.
Development support for a rom-com with a coastal destination
Mithila Gupta’s Desi Down Under has received development backing. The planned romantic-comedy feature will adapt Gupta’s coming-of-age Indian-Australian audio series. It follows three misfits traveling from Kerala to Coogee beach, where they intend to learn surf-lifesaving skills so they can help fellow members of their community.
Gupta is writing and producing with Nina Aujla, Smriti Mundhra and Maya Gnyp. As a development project, Desi Down Under should be understood as a feature advancing toward readiness rather than a confirmed finished production. Still, the supplied concept establishes a clear mix of migration, friendship, romance and a specific Australian coastal setting.
The round’s combination of production and development work has a practical benefit for the screen sector: projects at different stages can be supported simultaneously. A production investment may help a project proceed with its already-assembled creative team and partners; a development investment may give a writing and producing team room to refine the work needed to reach that stage. The round includes both, rather than treating screen storytelling as a one-step process.
Short films bring bushfire memory and demon-hunting animation
Two short-film projects illustrate the tonal range at the shorter end of the slate. BAFTA-nominated Rosie Westhoff writes and directs Solastalgia, about a young girl piecing together memories of the bushfire that destroyed her home while seeking connection in an altered landscape. Chloe Brennan, Amanda Browne and Ashlee Russell produce, with Kitty Green attached as mentor.
The word solastalgia refers to distress associated with environmental change in one’s home environment. That title aligns closely with the film’s stated focus on a child, a home lost to bushfire and a place fundamentally changed by what happened.
Green is also mentoring the makers of My Life as a 12-Year-Old Demon Hunter… With Great Hair!, a family short from Pasifika-led Mana Film Productions. The project combines live action and animation and follows 12-year-old Tala over one day as she fights demons attempting to steal her powers, an obstacle that proves more demanding than her homework.
Maria Lewis writes, directs and co-produces, with Shonee Samia co-producing and Herbert Leota animating. Jake Duczynski joins Green as a mentor. Both shorts received principal production funding. The pairing is a revealing snapshot of the slate’s range: one short approaches memory, loss and post-bushfire displacement, while the other uses supernatural adventure and hybrid visual form for a family-oriented story.
What is known—and what remains open
The funding announcement supplies substantial information on creators, story premises, partner organizations and, for selected projects, distribution or international-sales representation. It does not provide release dates for The Best Of, Bull, No Friend But the Mountains, the untitled Sooshi Mango feature, the series titles or the two short films. Nor does it identify a cast for Collette’s directing debut.
That uncertainty is worth keeping separate from the confirmed news. Collette’s move to feature director is confirmed, as are her producing partnership with Christopher Simon, the source novel, the film’s central premise and its listed distribution and sales arrangements. The rest—such as when audiences may see the finished film or who will portray its former lovers—has not been detailed here.
Screen Australia is expected to disclose more recently supported projects alongside the ABC Media Showcase on October 21. For now, the immediate headline is a funding round with significant variety, led by a new directing assignment for one of Australia’s most recognizable screen performers and supported by a wide set of literary, original, serious, comic and family-focused stories.
