25 June 2003
Yahoo.com - click
here for original source
Outback town dusts up for Hollywood
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The hunt to find the desert battlefields of Alexander the Great has brought Hollywood movie moguls to the dusty Australian outback town of Broken Hill.
The town, with a population of just 20,000, is on the list of possible locations for the reportedly US$150 million (90 million pound) film about the famed conqueror, to star Leonardo di Caprio as Alexander and Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman as his mother.
Hollywood filmmakers Baz Luhrmann and Dino De Laurentiis toured the isolated, outback town looking for desert locations after Morocco was crossed off due to safety concerns following the Iraqi war.
"Alexander the Great spent most of his time as a ruler crashing around the Middle East," Andrew Plumer, film project coordinator in Broken Hill, told Reuters on Wednesday.
He said the film was looking for an arid landscape to double as the Middle East.
Broken Hill, a silver-mining town 1,165 km (724 miles) west of Sydney, rolled out a homespun red carpet for Academy Award nominee Luhrmann and De Laurentiis, winner of an Oscar for lifetime achievement in the movie industry.
Broken Hill has already had its share of casting calls. The biggest to date was Mission Impossible II, starring Tom Cruise, who in 1999 when the film was shot was married to Sydney native Kidman and known as "Australia's favourite son-in-law".
Most of the 40 films shot there were Australian productions, including one of the dustiest movies ever made, Mad Max II.