In the know

The most compelling reason to shoot a fi lm in Australia? Th e climate? Th e kangaroos and koalas? Th e funny way people talk?

“Logistically, you’re a long, long way from the studio, so things have to be going very badly for them to want to fl y out to the set,” says director Alex Proyas, who is Australian and undoubtedly biased, but also probably knows what he’s talking about, having last helmed the mega-budgeted Will Smith studio production I, Robot.

The filmmaker’s latest, the paranormal thriller Knowing, is a decidedly — and we suspect deliberately — smaller affair.

Opening March 20, it stars Nicolas Cage as a professor who decodes a series of numbers discovered in a 1950s-era time capsule; much to his dismay, he concludes the numerals foretell cataclysms — hence the jet seen crashing into a highway in the movie’s trailer. Despite the high concept, the script has undergone a number of incarnations over the past few years. When Proyas — whose credits also include Dark City and Th e Crow — read it the fi rst time, he actually rejected it. “It was more of a supernatural thriller, which didn’t really interest me.”

After Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly was briefl y attached, the script again tumbled into limbo, eventually re-circulating back to Proyas, who altered its direction “from supernatural to science fiction.”

Throughout the process, he says he was attracted to the relationship Cage’s character shares with his young son. “It has to have a strong emotional resonance for myself. Th at’s just the way I see things. I don’t know how I could spend two years of my life on an action script that had no depth whatsoever ... What I want is a challenge.”

And after the I, Robot shoot in Vancouver for Fox, Proyas says he was “extremely lucky” to make Knowing for Summit, the same upstart studio behind the Twilight franchise. “They’ve been very hands-off and given me the freedom I needed.”

Next for Proyas may be a thriller of an entirely different breed — Dracula: Year Zero.

“It’s a script I really like. It’s about the origins of the legend of Dracula, but it has a new spin. It’s not 100% yet; it’s coming down to budget and casting, which are usually the hold-ups. But it’s a movie that has to be done on a grand scale.”

WHAT WATCHMEN WROUGHT:

If Watchmen is the hit everybody expects it to be, will it open the door for more, even weirder graphic novel movies? Maybe even ones without superheroes?

Bruce McDonald hopes so. The director, whose low- budget Canadian zombie flick Pontypool opened in selected markets this weekend, has the rights to Canadian author Chester Brown’s Yummy Fur, with a script in hand by Don McKellar.

Yummy Fur is... well, why don’t we let McDonald tell you? “It’s about a clown and a vampire girl who are trying to return the President of the United States to his rightful dimension. Uh, actually it’s the president’s penis that has come through to another dimension. Th ere are pygmies that live in the sewer and a parallel dimension and a lot of s---. Literally. In this parallel dimension, they haven’t invented toilets and they haven’t fi gured out what to do with their s---.

“It’s kind of like the Flash Gordon kind of vibe, but with a slightly more nightmarish edge. It’s a little love story and really clever and weird.

“Timing is everything with this studio stuff , but it’s becoming more and more possible. It’s pretty crazy materal, so it’s not going to be a Watchmen budget. It’d have to be like six or seven million dollars, but that’s still not a lot of money.”

NO JOKE(R): Like a beloved athlete whose sweater is “retired,” some fanboys want the character of Th e Joker to be declared off -limits forever out of respect to the late Heath Ledger and the impossible bar he set as the character in The Dark Knight.

As of this week, the ultimatejoker.com had slightly more than 31,000 “clicks” on its petition to retire the character from fi lms. Th e organizers say 50,000 would amount to a significant statement.