Thunder down under
Record crowd at confab honors Colosimo
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Colosimo, who gained local and international attention with supporting roles in "Lantana" and "Chopper," will be featured in three films due for release in Oz over the next six months: Bill Bennett's comedy "The Nugget," Tony Ayres' drama "Walking on Water" and Marc Gracie's laffer "Take Away."
The award is voted by exhibs, distribs and other industry reps at the convention, which runs through Saturday at the Royal Pines Resort in Queensland. This edition has drawn a record 863 attendees.
Previous award recipients include Russell Crowe, Heath Ledger, Hugh Jackman, Geoffrey Rush, Eric Bana and Hugo Weaving.
Meanwhile, introducing clips of 24 upcoming Oz films at the Australia on Show evening, Oz film commission chief exec Kim Dalton sounded a troubled note, saying, "It's never been harder to finance films."
Nonetheless, he predicted local films would achieve a B.O. share this year similar to the 8% notched in the past two years.
Dalton said the 27 Aussie pics released in 2001 had aggregate budgets of $A166 million ($91 million), which he estimated repped just 1% of the total production costs of the 165 U.S. films distributed Down Under last year.
