Cameras are rolling on a slew of high-end TV productions with all-star casts that are calling Melbourne home this Australian summer.

Season two of supernatural drama Bloom and season eight of popular prison drama Wentworth are filming across Victoria, while highly anticipated new TV series Clickbait and Shantaram are based at Docklands Studios Melbourne.

Starring Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy), Shantaram is a 10-part TV adaptation of Gregory David Roberts’ best-selling, semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. Produced by Paramount Television and Anonymous Content, the series is being filmed in India and Australia, with location shoots anticipated at Melbourne’s historic Pentridge Prison where the actual prison break took place. This is the second time Hunnam has filmed in Victoria, following Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang, which will be released in Australia in January. Kurzel is directing the first two episodes of Shantaram.

Co-created by Victorians Tony Ayres and Christian White, Clickbait is an 8-episode character-based thriller which explores the ways in which our most dangerous and uncontrolled impulses are fueled in the age of social media and reveals the ever-widening fractures we find between our virtual and real-life personas. The Netflix Original series is produced by Melbourne-based Matchbox Pictures and Tony Ayres Productions together with UK production company Heyday Television for Netflix and NBCUniversal.

Bloom season two welcomes back stars Jacki Weaver, Bryan Brown and Phoebe Tonkin and sees Jacqueline McKenzie (Romper Stomper) and Bella Heathcote (Strange Angel) join the cast. Created by Victorian Glen Dolman and produced by Playmaker for Sony Pictures Television, the six-part Stan Original Series is returning to the regional Victorian town of Clunes to film, with directors Greg McLean (Wolf Creek) and Sian Davies (Nowhere Boys) at the helm. Sony Pictures Television sold the first series of Bloom to a raft of territories including Hulu in the US and My5, the UK’s Channel 5’s VOD service.

Fremantle’s Wentworth is Australia’s longest-running one-hour drama series, and its eighth season will see the show reach an extraordinary 100 episodes on Foxtel. A re-imagining of the original Prisoner series, Wentworth has been a global phenomenon with over 140 territories including United Kingdom, France, Canada, Finland, Israel and Macedonia screening the series and adaptations produced in four countries.

For more information on Victoria’s production incentives and filming locations, contact:

Joe Brinkmann
Manager, Production Attraction & Support

[email protected]
www.film.vic.gov.au

Feature image: Phoebe Tonkin in Bloom