Baz Luhrmann says Nicole Kidman has come around on 'Australia,' their 2008 box-office bomb

In a box of sparkling diamonds, there’s always one hidden gem.

For three decades, Baz Luhrmann has brought his singular vision to extravagant hits like “Elvis,” “The Great Gatsby” and “Moulin Rouge!” But in 2008, the Aussie filmmaker made a rare misstep with “Australia,” which carried a $130 million price tag but made just $50 million at the U.S. box office.

The historical melodrama, which received mixed reviews, tells the story of Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), an English aristocrat who teams up with a strapping cattle hand known as Drover (Hugh Jackman) to help save her late husband’s ranch in the Australian Outback.

Now, Luhrmann is revisiting “Australia” as a six-part, four-hour Hulu miniseries called “Faraway Downs” (streaming Sunday). Reedited from 2 ½ million feet of existing footage, the show expands on the stories of the two romantic leads, as well as that of Nullah (Brandon Walters), a young boy in danger of being taken away by the government due to his mixed race.

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Luhrmann, 61, also employs new music and opening credits from young Indigenous artists, which he considers the “greatest joy” of this reimagined project. He recently spoke to USA TODAY about the legacy of “Australia” and more. (Edited for length and clarity.)

Question: How long have you been wanting to revisit "Australia" as a series?

Answer: When Tom Hanks famously got COVID on “Elvis,” we shut down and I didn’t know if the movie would come back. It felt like possibly it was over, and I was like, “Well, what can I do?” I was in Australia shooting, so I started thinking about a lot of the themes in “Australia” that we were reaching for and how (those) could have been deeper. And as I started to examine the footage, I realized how naturally episodic television would suit the telling of this story. Although it did not land well in the U.S., it’s still my biggest film in Europe by far. One has to respect the relationship of anyone who connected with it as a film, so I thought, “I’ll do a variation on it and make a new work.”

What surprised you most about the reception to the film back in 2008?

Look, I never think any of my movies are perfect. But the way we landed in the U.S. was so fraught. I had great conflict about when we should put the film out. There was a very big drive from the studio to put it out on Thanksgiving, and I was like, “Who at home is going to be like, 'Let’s go and give thanks and see a movie called ‘Australia?’” Mind you, it’s coming out (around the same time) on streaming. But episodic television is something you can all sit around at home and watch. There’s a universality to it.

Another thing that happened in America – and I was very disappointed – is that it was literally being sold as Australia’s Pearl Harbor (due to a pivotal sequence late in the film), and I just thought that was not truthful. So when we went to Europe, we started using trailers that really identified what it was, which was a sweeping epic like “Lawrence of Arabia” but told from an Indigenous child’s point of view about this truly diabolical moment in our nation’s history when mixed-race children were taken from their families. I wanted to make a film that used romance and adventure to open the door to this (atrocity) to a wider audience.

Nicole said in a 2009 interview that although Hugh and Brandon are "wonderful" in the movie, she isn't "proud" of her performance. Did she ever express those feelings to you?

She said that, and it becomes this sort of clickbait. I see (those headlines) and go, “That’s annoying” because she would have said it out of her own humility. But I can tell you something: Nicole worked on “Faraway Downs” doing dialogue (dubbing) and we talk all the time. She rang about three years ago and said, “Oh, Bazzy, we played ‘Australia’ for the family and it’s their favorite movie.” She said, “I just couldn’t see it back then.” She was at that place where you get a lot of media noise for one reason or another. I can’t speak for her, but I can tell you she considers it her family’s favorite movie of hers. We just went on an extraordinary journey together, all of us. In fact, I’m chatting with Hugh in a few days.

After this experience with "Faraway Downs," would you ever consider making another series? (Luhrmann previously co-created Netflix's "The Get Down," which was canceled after one season.)

I will always be No. 1 devoted to the cinema. I can’t help it; that’s who I am. But we’ll see how this goes. I wouldn’t do an episodic version of “Moulin Rouge!” because it’s a very tight film. But there’s a film I worked on recently that can work as a theatrical experience, and then you could reexamine it as an episodic version.

I assume you're referring to "Elvis?" You've spoken before about a potential four-hour cut.

Yeah. I’ve got to be careful because I cannot tell you how many “Elvis” fans have told me, “Please give us the four-hour version.” I have seen a four-hour rough cut, and the idea that I might one day do a (longer edit) is absolutely real. But I think time has to pass because the movie lives on its own. “Elvis” as a canvas for exploration about American culture and toxic relationships and flying too close to the sun – that’s all present in the film. But there are other layers in the four-hour version that I would be able to lean into.

Have you had a chance yet to see Sofia Coppola's "Priscilla," about Elvis' wife? 

No, I haven’t, and I’m really keen to see it. Sofia’s a friend of mine. My whole attitude towards it is, it just amplifies the point that the life of Elvis Presley was such an extraordinary one. So epic, and yet he lived for such a short time. His impact on the world was so grand that I hope many movies are made about Elvis from many different perspectives at many different times.

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