Burke & Wills (1985) watch online HD

Personnel who worked on both 1985 movies, the drama Burke & Wills (1985) and the comedy Wills & Burke (1985), included three actors: Chris Haywood, Roderick Williams and Peter Collingwood.

American star Charlton Heston was considered to play one of the two leading roles, that of Robert O'Hara Burke, but this part in the end was cast with Australian actor Jack Thompson.

With a budget of around $9.3 million (Australian dollars) the picture was at the tine the most expensive Australian film ever to be produced.

The film's screenplay originally went into development in 1978 it being developed by Thorn EMI Films who contracted Terence Rattigan to write a script. Director Graeme Clifford rejected this and commissioned Michael Thomas to write a new screenplay.

The picture was the first ever Australian Royal Premiere debuting on 2nd November 1985 before your Royal Highnesses Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

The Australian exhibitor-distributor Greater Union (GU) was originally going to finance the film but director Graeme Clifford went off to direct Frances (1982) in which time GU lost interest but another Australian exhibitor-production group, Hoyts-Edgley, came on board, and agreed to finance the picture.

The movie screened out-of-competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986.

For authenticity, director Graeme Clifford wished to film in as many of the actual real life locations, such as Coopers Creek, from the true life Burke and Wills ill-fated expedition of 1860-1861.

The agreement director Graeme Clifford and Australian star Jack Thompson made for the latter to play the top-billed role of Robert O'Hara Burke took place up in the air in an airplane. Clifford told Australian film critic David Stratton: "We shook hands and agreed to do the picture at 35,000 feet outside the business class toilet".

Director Graeme Clifford had the idea for the film prior to it being made for at least eight years.

Famous Australian artist Sidney Nolan worked as a painter on the production of the film.

Australian actor Jack Thompson identifiably sports a bushy beard in this motion picture.

The film was released in the same year as the "Burke and Wills" spoof movie, with that film's title the reverse of this movie, and entitled Wills & Burke (1985).

Australian Actors Equity opposed the casting of English actor Nigel Havers in the second billed lead role William John Wills but this decision was overturned at the arbitration commission.

The production shoot for this picture ran for a principal photography period of around thirteen weeks.

Though filmed in Australia both the film's director Graeme Clifford and the movie's screenwriter Michael Thomas were both expatriate Australians.

The movie was nominated for four AFI (Australian Film Institute) Awards, all in technical categories, but failed to win a gong in any of them.

Director Graeme Clifford only ever perceived Australian actor Jack Thompson for the top-billed lead part of Robert O'Hara Burke. Moreover, after seeing Nigel Havers in Chariots of Fire (1981), Clifford wanted Havers for the other second billed lead role of William John Wills.

The movie performed poorly at the box-office in Australia. Jonathan Chissick commented in an article "The budgets, the pictures, the problems..." by Nick Roddick in Australian film magazine 'Cinema Papers' that "people in Australia were just not interested in seeing a picture about these two guys dying in the desert".

In Australia, to jump the gun on the serious historical drama Burke & Wills (1985), which launched on 31st October 1985, the spoof parody of the classic historical story, Wills & Burke (1985), opened a week before the epic Burke & Wills (1985) film, on 24th October 1985.

The distance covered by the expedition led by Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills was 3700 miles (or 5955 kilometers) according to publicity for the picture but historical research states that it was about 2000 miles (or 3250 kilometers).

Two of the movie's stars had recently starred in India set pictures they being Greta Scacchi in Heat and Dust (1983) and Nigel Havers in A Passage to India (1984).

Publicity for the picture stated that the expedition involved 6 wagons, 19 men, 21 tons of equipment, 27 camels and 28 horses worth of supplies and equipment required to set out in order "to conquer the country".

When Charlton Heston was approached to play Burke, Trevor Howard was being courted to star opposite him.

British Lion were one month away from shooting a version in 1971, when it was shutdown. Nicol Williamson and Hywel Bennett would have starred.

A comic parody version of the Burke & Wills story entitled "Wills & Burke" (1985) was released in the same 1985 year as this "Burke & Wills" movie.

The movie portrays Burke and Wills as frolicking on the ocean in Carpentaria. In reality, the explorers never saw a beach, in fact whilst they did reach salt water and observe tides rise and fall by eight inches, swamps and mangroves made the last five miles to the ocean inaccesible.