The nine songs by Sigur Rós in the film were initially used as a temporary score. However, director Scott Hicks felt the music was so perfect for the film that he personally traveled to Iceland to get approval from Sigur Rós to be featured in the film.

Simon Carr and his two sons, the people the film is based upon, all visited the set during filming.

The house in the film was built at a property in Myponga Beach, South Australia and was planned to be taken down after filming. Owners of the property, however, persuaded producers to leave the house and surrounding areas intact and it has now been converted into the successful Bed and Breakfast "Brooklyn Farm - Joe's House".

This is the first time that South Australian director Scott Hicks has filmed a movie in his home state of South Australia since 1996's Academy Award winning Shine (1996).

Debut producer credit of actor Clive Owen who did producing duties as an executive producer.

It took eight weeks to construct the Warr's house for the film.

The German distributor Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures has scheduled a theatrical release for 28 January 2010, but they removed that date and replaced it with a direct-to-DVD release, because they expected too few ticket sales.

Source author Simon Carr's memoir about his wife's death and his subsequent challenge raising two sons was published in 2001 with the title 'The Boys Are Back in Town' with the book receiving critical acclaim.

Simon Carr, author and parliamentary sketch writer for UK's 'The Independent', originally contacted Peter Bennett-Jones, chairman of Tiger Aspect Productions, to seek advice on optioning his book for the screen.

Source novelist Simon Carr said he was "chatting" to executive producer Peter Bennett-Jones about his book being filmed asking if it should become a television series or possibly a sitcom?. And when Bennett-Jones suggested the book should be made into a film, Carr said, "the trouble with that is films never get made."

Six years after his first contact with producer Peter Bennett-Jones, on a chilly winter's morning, Simon Carr visited the film set of 'The Boys Are Back'. It was shoot day forty-seven of fifty-one shooting days. Carr stood on a platform at London's Paddington Station watching director Scott Hicks direct and actor Clive Owen act in a scene taken from his very own life. Carr conceded: "My pessimism has, so far, been utterly confounded by Peter's determination to get this project out and by the amazing job that's been done with it."

Source writer Simon Carr explained that his memoir was written originally "to tell what it was like for a single father to bring up two boys in an all-male household." Carr believes fathers are "rather undervalued". He said, "And I'm not sure that our role in the family has been well explored by novelists and filmmakers over the last twenty-five years and I think this is going to go quite a long way to make up for that. We do have feelings too!".

This film project was enthusiastically received at Tiger Aspect Productions from the earliest days of development. Greg Brenman, producer of the film and co-chairman of the production company said the story had appeal due to its "wildness of spirit and that sort of semi-feral way that men would bring up kids." Brenman explained that a comprehensive story had to be written to create a workable film from Simon Carr's source memoir but that the script had remained faithful to the essence of Carr's life. "He's such a larger than life, outrageous, intentionally contentious and provocative, charming, seductive guy that we tried to wrap up a lot of that spirit and essence and put it into the film," said Brenman.

The film was made and first released about eight years after its source memoir 'The Boys Are Back in Town' by Simon Carr had been first published in 2001.

The title of the film's source memoir 'The Boys Are Back in Town' (2001) by Simon Carr had a slight name change for this feature film adaptation, dropping the last two "in town" words of the title, and becoming 'The Boys Are Back'.

Scriptwriter Allan Cubitt was brought onto the project to adapt Simon Carr's critically acclaimed 2001 memoir.

During early drafts of the screenplay the story was relocated from New Zealand to Australia and the occupation of Joe Warr (Clive Owen) was changed from being a political journalist to a sports writer.

The occupation of Joe Warr (Clive Owen) was changed from political journalist to sports writer for this film adaptation. Screenwriter Allan Cubitt felt that if Warr was a political writer, the script would need to address the nature of Australian politics, which he thought was an "unnecessary sort of challenge".

For inspiration, screenwriter Allan Cubitt met with UK journalist Richard Williams who had started out in music press and later moved into sports journalism, for the sports writer character of Joe Warr (Clive Owen).

Despite the changes from Simon Carr's source memoir to movie screenplay, screenwriter Allan Cubitt said: "I've used Simon's lines and dialogue wherever I could" and that he had often gone back to the book to find moments he thought he needed in the film.

Screenwriter Allan Cubitt said that at the heart of the film is the question, "How does this man relate to these boys?". Cubitt said that for him, the film is really about fathering sons: "How do you bring up boys? How do you parent boys?".

Allan Cubitt, the film's screenwriter, felt a "great sympathy and empathy" with the character of Joe Warr (Clive Owen) from the beginning. He said it was an emotional experience writing the film, particularly the scenes where Joe's wife is dying.

Of script-writing, screenwriter Allan Cubitt said in publicity for this picture: "One of the tricks of being a writer of drama is to empathize with those characters and feel their feelings, their joy and pain and so on, so I am frequently in tears when writing," he explained. "In fact, if I am not actually crying while I'm writing then I worry it's probably not working."

Of actor Clive Owen portraying the central character of Joe Warr, screenwriter Allan Cubitt found the casting most appropriate. "There has to be an element of playfulness in the character so he is not just a bore, and not just a kind of unreconstructed man, but that there is an intelligence, an emotional intelligence at work as well, and so I think Clive captures that perfectly," he said.

Tiger Aspect Pictures had director Scott Hicks in mind as the director from the outset, said producer Greg Brenman. "One of the reasons we went for Scott Hicks once we had the script was because of 'Shine' [1996]. Scott conveyed to the world that he is a master at working with actors and a master at working with complicated chamber pieces - which is family life," he said.

Director Scott Hicks first read the movie's script about five years prior to production and was "thrilled by the material". Hicks was "intrigued" and worked closely with Tiger Aspect Productions and scriptwriter Allan Cubitt over the intervening years developing the material and planning the casting.

Of the film's screenplay, director Scott Hicks said that screenwriter "Allan Cubitt did an extraordinary job in adapting the story into a screenplay, I love the combination of emotion and humor . . . It happens that those sort of things engage me." Hicks added: "Often in our darkest moments, it is humor that gets us through. I think it a national characteristic of Australians and it is something of a feature of my work in the sense that 'Shine' [1996] was a film that, in addition to being very emotional, was also quite funny."

When star Clive Owen read a draft of the script he was immediately interested. After meeting with director Scott Hicks to discuss the film, he committed to the project. "I knew instinctively that Scott was the perfect guy for this movie," explained Owen.

"A very intimate family drama like this needs very delicate handling. It's about directors who can handle people and characters sensitively," said lead actor Clive Owen. "It's very clear when you meet (director Scott Hicks) that he's got that sensitivity and that patience and that understanding. Owen added: "I also knew instinctively that he wouldn't do the really obvious well-placed little cute family drama. And that it would be mature and smart and the perception and the perspectives of the movie would be very intelligent and smart because you see his films and you know that's what he's like as a director".

Of the casting of the lead actor, director Scott Hicks said: "Once Clive Owen got involved, his schedule and my schedule refused to align, so it took several years while each of us were completing various projects before we could get to this passage of time where we were both available." But Hicks said he has a "very Zen approach" and that "these things do seem to have their own time." And in this case the intervening years provided an opportunity for the writer, director and actor to meet and work together developing the story.

Lead actor Clive Owen says he often gets involved working on a script "once the thing gets going" but says that on 'The Boys Are Back' he spent a "serious amount of time" working in London with screenwriter Allan Cubitt and director Scott Hicks during the film's development.

Of developing the movie's screenplay, director Scott Hicks said of collaborating with star Clive Owen: "I spent longer with Clive going through this script than any other actor I've ever worked with. His attention to detail is painstaking."

Of one of the script development meetings with actor Clive Owen and director Scott Hicks, screenwriter Allan Cubitt said: "We all had a very good day together going through the script and listening specifically to Clive's take on the character and the drama and that's been really useful I think, arriving at a script that everyone feels represents the material well and is shoot-able."

A quote about this film from its film's director Scott Hicks says: "A household of boys in the absence of women, but as a unit: Very unusual, very irregular, but somehow it works... Is it all going to be easy?. Is it all going to be straightforward?. I don't think so. But that's life."

Debut theatrical feature film of actor Nicholas McAnulty who portrayed Artie, Joe Warr (Clive Owen)'s six-year-old son.

One of at least five film collaborations of actor Chris Haywood and director Scott Hicks. The films are: 'Shine' (1996), 'Freedom' (1982), the short 'No Going Back' (1981), 'The Boys Are Back' (2009), and 'Call Me Mr. Brown' (1990) in which Haywood had the starring role.

The rocky, precarious, yet insistently life-affirming journey of 'The Boys Are Back' began with the real-life story of a father facing his family's greatest crisis the only way he could; by sheer instinct, with unflagging humor and a dogged refusal to give up on the most primal basics of love and life no matter the daily battles ahead. In 1994, source novelist Simon Carr's wife Susie died after a gutsy bout against cancer. Up until then, life had been pretty darned good for the journalist. He was deeply in love, a respected workaholic, and a man with a spontaneous streak of adventure and dry wit. But suddenly, Carr woke up a single father without a single clue as to how to go on, let alone do the laundry.

Wrestling with an oncoming tidal wave of foreign emotions, source novelist Simon Carr nevertheless had to figure out how to re-invent himself, how to go from a shell-shocked widower to a hands-on dad with the wherewithal to bring his family back from the brink. It wasn't easy, and there was no map. He dodged all the do-gooder advice, and started his own experiment in what he called "free range" parenting. He proudly made every mistake in the book. And yet, somehow, day after day, struggle after struggle, Carr and his two sons found a way to grab onto momentary pleasures, "and each other", as they began to re-emerge as a stronger, different kind of family unit than they might have imagined. Though they called themselves "The Lost Boys", the father and sons found something vitally sustaining in each other and in the human spirit's capability to survive a world where nothing, ever, can be taken for granted.

In 2001, source novelist Simon Carr published his memoir, 'The Boys Are Back' to stellar reviews and a passionate readership. 'The Daily Mail' called it "achingly funny and almost unbearably moving" and "The Sunday Times' said "Carr's brilliantly written account of life as a single parent should be a required manual on parenting." For Carr, the book was a chance to not only come to grips with what had happened to him, but to write about family from a perspective that has long been a mysterious blank spot in literature and film: the "dad" POV [point of view], and especially how dads interact with their kids. "I wrote the book as an explication of what it was like for a single father to bring up two boys in an all-male household," he said. "Our role as fathers hasn't been all that well-explored over the last twenty-five years and I wanted to make up a bit for that, because we do it completely differently from the way that women do."

Source novelist Simon Carr generated controversy by writing candidly about his exuberant "Just Say Yes" policy that resulted in all kinds of unforeseen mischief, including the transformative day his younger son decided to leap off a window sill into their large bath tub. "Of course my first instinct was to say 'you can't, do that, you might hurt yourself,' Carr recalled, "but the truth is I will remember that evening the rest of my life. On my dying day, I will lie in my bed and look into the increasing darkness and remember the exhilarating joy on my son's face." It was that exhilarating joy - a welcoming back of life in all its messiness and unpredictability - that Carr hoped to share by telling his story with gritty honesty.

Of course, the film's source novelist Simon Carr could not have foreseen that his intimate confessions of how he simultaneously faced incomprehensible loss and fledgling fatherhood would one day result in a screen character brought to life with raw emotions by one of today's most sought-after leading men, Clive Owen, in an exposed dramatic turn. Carr's name would be shifted to Joe Warr, and details of his family's story would be changed, but when all was said and done, Carr was stunned to see the movie reflect back to him both some of the most devastating and most wonderful moments of his life.

Shortly after the publication of 'The Boys are Back' book, source novelist Simon Carr found himself in a surreal conversation with Peter Bennett-Jones, chairman of Tiger Aspect Pictures. Having fallen head over heals for Carr's memoir, Bennett-Jones told him outright that he thought it would make a terrific film. "My pessimism was utterly confounded by Peter's determination to get this project out," admitted Carr.

The team at Tiger Aspect Pictures was driven to make the film in part because they saw something fresh in source novelist Simon Carr's story that hadn't been brought to the screen. Tiger Aspect Pictures' co-chair man and producer Greg Brenman explained: "We felt the story had real appeal because it uniquely captures the wildness of spirit and the sort of semi-feral way that men bring up kids," he said. "At the same time, it's about the memorable experiences that we all have in childhood and in being parents."

At the heart of the story is the character of source novelist Simon Carr himself and re-named Joe Warr. "He's such a larger than life, outrageous, intentionally contentious and provocative, charming, seductive guy that we felt that his spirit and essence would make for an unforgettable lead character," said producer Greg Brenman.

Undeterred by source novelist Simon Carr's momentary skepticism, Tiger Aspect Pictures undertook a search for a screenwriter who could match Carr's seriocomic sensibilities and found exactly that in Allan Cubitt. Although best known for his work on the multi award-winning British mystery series 'Prime Suspect 2', Cubitt's work was diverse, ranging from adaptations of 'Anna Karenina' and 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', to the BBC mini-series, 'The Hanging Gale', about a family in the midst of the Irish Potato famine. It was Cubitt's passion for Carr's book that made him the winning candidate.

"I loved the book," screenwriter Allan Cubitt said. "There were so many things that struck me as true and interesting and funny. The challenge of it, though, was that it's a very much structured as a memoir, as a series of reflections on life and death and parenting and everything else that comes into Simon's orbit. We had to take that essence and find a way to make it work in a film narrative."

During early script drafts, screenwriter Allan Cubitt began to mold the character of Joe Warr, relocating the story from New Zealand, where Carr had moved as a British expat, to Australia, and changing his occupation from political journalism to a more action-oriented sportswriter. As he wrote about him, Cubitt began to form a great deal of love and compassion for the emerging character. "I felt great sympathy and empathy with Joe, and I hope he has achieved an independent life of his own," said Cubitt. "His joy and pain were both so real to me that I was frequently in tears while writing."

To garner further insight, screenwriter Allan Cubitt met with UK sports journalist Richard Williams to learn more about a sportswriter's lifestyle. "Sports is a really exciting thing to write about and I wanted Joe to write the sort of colorful, personal column that people enjoy reading so much. I had in mind someone like Martin Amis writing about tennis, " said Cubitt. "And when Richard said that he was often away for 265 days of the year, that seemed to me to fit well with who Joe is when his wife dies."

But the heart of the story for screenwriter Allan Cubitt lay in excavating all the nooks and crannies of father-son relationships at their most vulnerable and vital. "One of the big questions in the book is how do you bring up boys? How do you see them through trauma? And how does a man find a way to relate to his sons?. I wanted to expose on screen those things that men don't necessarily do when women are around, to explore the intimacy of their relationships, which are physical and sporty but I think also very touching and true," summed-up Cubitt.

With a screenplay that was equal parts exuberant and emotionally stripped-bare, as well as set in Australia, producer Greg Brenman had focused in on one particular director who seemed born for the material. This was Scott Hicks, who directed the critically acclaimed, multi Oscar nominated film 'Shine' (1996), a worldwide box office hit, which recounted the intensely moving, often funny story of an Australian pianist's breakdown and recovery, and garnered Geoffrey Rush the Academy Award for Best Actor for his richly human performance. "With 'Shine', Scott conveyed to the world that he is a master at working with actors and a master at working with complicated chamber pieces - which is the nature of family life," said Brenman.

Since 'Shine' (1996), director Scott Hicks had directed a number of Hollywood features, ranging from 'Snow Falling on Cedars' (1999) and 'Hearts in Atlantis' (2001) to the then recent 'No Reservations' (2007), but 'The Boys Are Back' would bring Hicks himself "back" - not only home to his beloved South Australia, but to the theme of family upheaval and the inner territory of personal transformations in the midst of an absurdly impossible situation.

Director Scott Hicks remembered being knocked out by the screenplay's distinctive tone. "I loved the combination of emotion and humor," he said. "Often in our darkest moments it is humor that gets us through. I think it a national characteristic of Australians and it is something of a feature of my work in the sense that 'Shine' was a film that, in addition to being very emotional, was also quite funny."

Director Scott Hicks read the source novel but screenwriter Allan Cubitt's adaptation impressed him even more. Hicks said: "Carr's book is extremely entertaining, and very moving but it's not a conventional narrative. Al [screenwriter Allan Cubitt] had the challenge of creating a story that could thread together all these family incidents and he did a remarkable job of that. My challenge was to then kind of unravel that and work out the choreography, the physical expression of the scenes - in a way that is alive and real."

As director Scott Hicks began working closely with screenwriter Allan Cubitt, he found himself more and more swept up in the Carr family's unusual trek towards reconciliation. "It's a very personal story about people trying to reconnect with each another and about all these ingredients, love, loss, humor, which make up our everyday existence," said Hicks. "As a father, I couldn't help but identify with the situations and emotional conflicts, which made it very close to home."

Director Scott Hicks said: "I found Joe's story so very touching, the way the trauma of his wife's sudden death forces him to wake up emotionally and realize that he has to pay attention or he will lose his sons. It's something I think a lot of people will relate to. People's lives are so frenetic now and raising children is so hugely attention consuming. It's a dilemma that so many people face. How do I balance everything else in my life with my family? I think that's really the center of this story. And it's the stuff of great drama, because it deals with people's vulnerabilities."

Director Scott Hicks also viewed the story as a romance, not your typical love story, but rather, about the romantic ideals of creating a sustaining family, no matter how unconventional. "The real love story of this film is about a father and two sons," commented Hicks. "The family undertakes a kind of human experiment - a household of boys in the absence of women - and yet somehow it works. The thing I wanted to get across in the end is that, with all the mistakes and the mess and the blunders, Joe [Clive Owen] brings his family back together. Is it all going to be easy and straightforward? I don't think so, but that's what life is like, and that's the feeling I wanted in the film."

As the team continued to work, producer Greg Brenman also brought on board Australian-based producer Tim White, who was enamored with the finished script.

Director Scott Hicks was acutely aware that, much like 'Shine' had, this film's entire essence would hinge on a singular performance, that of the actor playing Joe Warr, who had to all at once be falling apart, raging against the darkness, indulging in black humor, covering the finals showdown at the Australian Open, and re-connecting with his sons on the most primitively playful level. It would take an intense performance from a highly skilled actor and Hicks thought early on of Clive Owen, who had never taken on a role quite like this one, but clearly had the depth to do so.

Even though Clive Owen had never played someone like Joe Warr, a family man whose journey in film takes place almost entirely under the skin, director Scott Hicks intuited that Owen would get to the bare core of the role. "Clive has a tremendous strength on screen, a great stillness about him that speaks of under-the-surface emotions. He is enormously subtle in his expressiveness so much of his performances comes from his eyes and the thoughts that radiate out of them, which make him very compelling to watch," said the director. "He is also someone who clearly enjoys life and has a great sense of himself and, again, that radiates out of him. And like anyone who is at the top of his game at that level, he makes it all look easy."

Star Clive Owen was drawn to how the story seemed to weave the fabric of our everyday family lives into something illuminating. "It's a very beautifully written script and every time I read it, I was practically in tears," he commented. "The idea of losing a partner and being left with the children is devastating, and leaves Joe trying to navigate the ups and downs of being a single parent, as well as trying to re-calibrate what their family life is. It's all very complicated. Grief is complicated. Parenting is complicated. And I thought this script explored that as well as any I've read and that's why I wanted to do this movie. It's a really compelling mining of what parents feel."

Equally intriguing to actor Clive Owen was the personality of his character Joe, which makes his struggles with trying to set his family back on course even more evocative. "Joe is a very fallible character," observed Owen. "He's not naturally very good at family life and this is a crazy, upside-down, volatile time for him. There are moments when things get really out of hand and he does make some big mistakes, but ultimately, you see that he's trying to do the right thing in his own way."

From the start, actor Clive Owen was 100% committed creatively, joining director Scott Hicks and screenwriter Allan Cubitt in probing conversations about the screenplay. "I spent longer with Clive going through this script than any other actor I've ever worked with. His attention to detail is painstaking," said Hicks. Producer Tim White recalled: "I remember Clive sitting down in a windowless hotel room with Scott, Allan, Greg Brenman and myself and spending eight hours just talking about the nuances of his character. We all walked away feeling very privileged to have an actor who was that devoted and who brought such a considered, insightful approach to taking this character from the page to the screen."

On the set, actor Clive Owen had an exhilarating experience, working, in a complete turnabout from his recent romantic comedies and action thrillers, almost entirely with two child actors. "I think the spirit of the movie lies in the children and how they perceive the world and how unpredictable they are," commented Owen. "I found it really interesting as an actor because kids really test you, since they're not exactly acting themselves. They're not conscious of what they're doing, while adult actors obviously are. So it's challenging and also very exciting because every day you have the raw, real thing coming back at you."

Producer Greg Brenman observed: "Clive became the ideal Joe Warr because he made Joe his own. You see him being cantankerous, difficult, lacking sensitivity, yet also being extremely vulnerable and really learning to put his kids before his own feelings. In bringing all of that out, Clive made the journey of the film even more moving."

With Clive Owen cast as Joe Warr, finding a couple of young actors to take the roles of his two disparate sons was an even more daunting task. Nikki Barrett, the film's Australian casting director, began by conducting a nation-wide search for Artie, the playful six-year old who has to try to make sense of the sudden departure of his mother from his life even as he watches his father nearly fall to pieces. Barrett looked at over a thousand boys, screen-tested another hundred and finally, short-listed about twenty. Out of that group, Scott Hicks believed that a clear winner emerged: six year-old Sydney native Nicholas McAnulty, who makes his motion picture debut in this movie.

Of the casting of Artie, director Scott Hicks recalled: "When it came to Artie [Nicholas McAnulty], I wanted someone who would be completely believable and the last thing I wanted was a child actor. Nicholas really intrigued me, because he was so forthright for a six-year-old. He had no shyness and no inhibition about him. He was very direct and struck up a conversation with me like any adult might. In his audition, he clearly had the ability to put himself entirely into the moment. The next step was presenting him to Clive for his response because the connection between them was going to be so vital to the success of the film."

Star Clive Owen clicked immediately with newcomer Nicholas McAnulty, something that quickly became obvious to everyone around them. "When you put them together, they became an instant family. They are spookily alike," said producer Greg Brenman. Clive Owen added: "With Nick we all took a gamble on a very unpredictable energy that kind of kept everyone, Scott [Hicks], me, everybody - on their toes. We didn't want to control it too much because that's the energy at the heart of the film."

The filmmakers' instincts proved themselves on the set, as Nicholas McAnulty gave himself over to sheer imagination. "This was an enormous task for a child to fulfill, to take on a leading role opposite an actor of the caliber of Clive Owen, and with a story as emotional as this, and yet Nicholas stood up to that challenge and everyday surprised me with something," noted director Scott Hicks. "I was very keen to have Artie's character, and indeed the whole film, have as much a sense of real life to it as possible, and Nick's ability to imagine himself a part of this world led to some dazzlingly true moments."

The search for Artie's half brother, the teen-aged Harry, who comes from England to live with Joe and Artie quite abruptly, was equally challenging. As a young man torn between his divorced parents and full of roiling emotions and resentments, Harry's arrival becomes a catalyst for his father's quest to reunite his sons, no matter what it takes. "The Harry storyline with Joe is especially interesting because it's about a boy who feels abandoned and a father who ran away, thinking he wasn't needed, and their struggle to heal that wound," commented producer Greg Brenman. "We needed someone who could convey the awkward dynamic of an adolescent with his Dad, yet also the sense of what Harry is searching for."

After a series of auditions in London with Nina Gold casting, director Scott Hicks again happened upon a young man whose presence took him aback. This was George MacKay, who had recently been seen as the youngest Bielski brothers in director Ed Zwick's tale of Jewish rebellion against the Nazis, 'Defiance' (2008), which starred Daniel Craig and Liev Schrieber. "George's reading was so touching and so subtle that it stuck in my mind," Hicks recalled. "I felt that if somebody could, with no appearance of acting, touch me so strongly that he had to be worth exploring."

When director Scott Hicks showed the tape of actor George MacKay's audition to actor Clive Owen, Hicks said: "Clive just flipped out and said, he's fantastic!. And so we were both very excited about the idea of the two of them working together."

Actor George MacKay, who played Harry, was drawn right away to the script, which he said stood out among all the others he had read at the time.

Debut theatrical feature film of actor Nicholas McAnulty who portrayed Artie.