Rave Reviewer TIM MILFULL speaks with writer-director of TOMORROW, WHEN THE WAR BEGAN, STUART BEATTIE and two of his charges, CAITLIN STASEY and PHOEBE TONKIN about the process of adapting the first novel in the beloved John Marsden series.

For the middle of a Monday afternoon, the bar at the Emporium Hotel is weirdly thumping. A voluptuous Mediterranean-looking woman is taking photos of herself spilling out of her low-cut dress, camera crews are setting up for interviews, and a chattering klatch of teenagers are speaking some weird dialect that might just be English. With some difficulty, the Paramount publicist manages to peel two of them away and sits them down in front of me. Former Neighbours princess, Caitlin Stasey has put a face to the name of John Marsden’s heroine, Ellie Linton, while Phoebe Tonkin has taken a break from her mermaid role in the TV series H2O to bring prima donna Fiona Maxwell to life. For those unfamiliar with the novels, Ellie and Fi are two teenagers in a little guerrilla group fighting to free their hometown from fascist forces that have invaded Australia and subjugated the population.

I start by asking them how they felt about adapting such a popular novel to film, and Phoebe leans forward enthusiastically, “Obviously there’s a lot of pressure, but we try not to let that get to us. It’s a film, and obviously the film isn’t the same as the book –it’s an independent medium. The script was our main guideline.” Caitlin adds in a posh, but endearing accent, “Of course, we’d probably have some anxiety about getting everything perfectly right, but what we have to understand, and what the audience has to recognise is that when you go in to watch a film, you experience something entirely different to what you experience when you read a book.”

The film production was quite a complicated, demanding affair, involving physical training, plentiful pyrotechnics, and a close bond between the eight teenagers. Caitlin says, “Yeah, it was scary at times. I mean, we had to hulk around these massive guns, and none of us are particularly fond of that – I don’t know if Phoebe’s not, and Andy’s not. The other boys were like Halo fans, so they were OK.” Phoebe agrees, “None of us felt empowered holding this big AK-47 – I’ve never seen a real gun before.” All of the teenagers in TWTWB are confronted with a similar challenge, says Caitlin, “There’s a big point for Ellie when she just comes to terms with the fact that her loyalties are with the people that she’s with, and obviously killing people is never the best option. But she understands that her loyalties lie with the people that she loves, and that’s the only thing she knows at this point.” Again, Phoebe concurs, “And what we’re doing now is exactly what I hope comes out of this film. I hope kids or young adults or adults even will be sitting around going, ‘Well, what about this?’ and having different opinions about what’s happened in this film and what each character has decided to do.”

First-time director, but very successful Hollywood screenwriter – Collateral, Pirates Of The Caribbean and others – feels just as strongly about the film, especially when Omnilab kept asking him to write the adaptation, “I read them and I loved them so much. I just felt like some filmmaker is going to come in and wreck them, you know. So I said no. I kept saying no, and they kept asking, and I kept saying no until I got that point in my life where I was just ready to direct, because I’d always wanted to direct. Finally, I said I’d adapt it if they’d let me direct it. At that point, they went, ‘Oh, well – OK.’”

The result is a pretty action-packed film with a strong emotional core, but I can see Stuart shrink a little when I ask the obvious question about a franchise. “You know, it’ll take a hell of a lot of money at the box office to make that a reality; the kind of figures that we never really see with Australian films. So you’d need to show a huge return on this film to be able to say, ‘Right, let’s start talking about sequels.’ Ideally, you’d have a release in North America, a big, wide, two-thousand screen release there, and make money there, and make money all over the world before you could really get into TWTWB 2 & 3. But we would love to do ’em.”

Personally, I’d love to see where Elli and her mates head next, so I hope Aussie audiences will buck the trend and bust some blocks on this one.

TOMORROW, WHEN THE WAR BEGAN opens in cinemas Thursday Sep 2. For more information check out www.twtwb.com .

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