Assassin's Creed and Macbeth director Justin Kurzel has been developing a film based on the infamous Ned Kelly gang for a couple of years, but only now is he starting to put the cast together. And while he doesn't appear to be reuniting with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard for a third time, he's putting together quite a crew. Russell Crowe, Nicholas Hoult, George MacKay, Essie Davis, Travis Fimmel (Warcraft) and Dacre Montgomery from Stranger Things season two. are set to star in True History of the Kelly Gang, based on the book by Peter Carey.
Kurzel reteams with Snowtown writer Shaun Grant for a film that "will shatter the mythology of notorious bushranger Ned Kelly (MacKay) with a gothic western for our times. MacKay was seen in last year's Captain Fantastic, while Essie Davis is best known for starring in The Babadook. Montgomery joined the second season of Stranger Things as Billy Hargrove, and also played the Red Ranger in Power Rangers.
Here's a synopsis of Carey's book: “I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false.”
In True History of the Kelly Gang, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semiliterate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.
Fillming begins in Australia next March.
