Gallipoli
1981 · 112 min
Directed by Peter Weir. Written by David Williamson, Ernest Raymond, Peter Weir. Starring Mel Gibson, Mark Lee, Bill Kerr, Harold Hopkins.
Two Australian sprinters face the brutal realities of war when they are sent to fight in the Gallipoli campaign in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
Critics 91% · audiences 83% · streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, YouTube (free) · $5.7 million in the US and Canada on its first run · about 2.1 million tickets sold, 0.90% of the country
How it got made
Peter Weir had wanted to make a film about the Gallipoli campaign since visiting Gallipoli in 1976 and discovering an empty Eno bottle on the beach. He wrote an outline of the script and gave it to David Williamson to turn into a screenplay. The script went through many variations; the South Australian Film Corporation did not like an early draft and said they did not want to fund the film, which then had a proposed budget of A$4.5 million. In May 1979 Weir asked Patricia Lovell to produce the film. The script then began to focus on the story of two runners. Lovell managed to raise A$850,000, which was not enough to make the film.
On 1 May 1980 Rupert Murdoch and Robert Stigwood announced they were forming a film company, R&R Films, later known as Associated R&R Films. This was a joint venture between News Corporation and the Robert Stigwood Organisation. They pledged an investment total of A$10m in local productions, with Gallipoli being the first but the company did not produce any more films. Lovell approached them with the script, and they agreed to fund it provided the budget did not exceed $3 million. He later said the final budget was $2.8 million, or $2.4 million with the rest consisting of fees. This was the highest budget of an Australian film to date. Murdoch's father, Keith Murdoch, had been a journalist during World War I, and after visiting Gallipoli in September 1915 became an influential agitator against the conduct of the campaign by the British high command.
Francis O'Brien, the only American in the company, was appointed international president of the company, and became executive producer of the film. Ben Gannon returned from the U.S. in 1980 join the company as general manager, and was associate producer of the film. He spent two years with the company, which he later described as "very frustrating". R&R had intended to develop more Australian films, with Australian directors and writers, with the next project slated as a film based on Gabrielle Lord's novel Fortress.
At the box office
Gallipoli proved to be a domestic success, grossing A$11.7 million at the Australian box office. Although the film was widely acclaimed by critics internationally, its box-office success outside Australia was modest. It earned US$5.7 million in the United States, where it was distributed in arthouse cinemas. In France, the film only attracted 39,227 spectators.