Tassie director brings hit comedy 'The Emu War' to Launceston's Star Cinema (2024)

The year is 1932.

Three soldiers from the Royal Australian Artillery regiment, armed with machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition, set out on a mission to end a blight against Western Australian farmers - emus.

The Emu War was a legitimate military operation to address the issue of emus damaging large amounts of crops in Western Australia.

The campaign lasted from November to December in 1932.

The mission was to cull roughly 20,000 emus but after two months, just 1000 emus were reported dead and the operation was deemed a failure.

Now, a fictional retelling of the war is coming to Launceston's own Star Cinema - and it features a stacked list of trending Australian comedians.

Co-directed and co-written by Tasmanian John Campbell, the movie took seven years to complete.

"It was a comedian friend of ours Jonathan Schuster who first pitched us the idea to make this a movie," Mr Campbell said.

"The real story is that in 1932 the West Australian government sent soldiers to cull local emu populations ... to treat this as a genuine part of Australian Military history seemed like a great place to make a comedy."

A joke becomes a dream

From idea to release, the film took seven years to complete - but it all started off as a joke according to Mr Campbell.

"We originally just made a fake trailer and released it on YouTube - it got a lot of comments saying we should make a real movie," Mr Campbell said.

"So there were a few years of pitching and trying to get funding. In 2019 we finally managed to get development funding which led to about a year of script writing, then as we were about to film, COVID hit Melbourne.

"Basically every time we tried to film we got locked down again; we finally finished filming in 2022 and then due to having very little budget the CGI/post production took about 18 months to complete."

The cast, compiled of notable Australian comedians and YouTube sensations like Aaron Gocs and Ozzy Man Reviews, have been known to Mr Campbell for many years.

"Basically everyone involved, myself and the other two directors Jay Morrissey and Lisa Fineberg, also Jonathan Schuster, started as standup comedians," Mr Campbell said.

"I think the opportunity to play something like this doesn't come around too often."

Rave reviews

The opening night screenings in Melbourne were both sold out - and Mr Campbell said he couldn't wait to bring it back to his home state.

"We requested specifically a Tasmanian screening," he said.

"The reactions have been really crazy, I was worried because doing comedy you never know if things will get laughs until people see them.

"I'm from Hobart but I've spent a lot of time in Launceston and love it there.

"I would love to one day make a movie about the Launceston herpes monkeys."

The Emu War premiers Friday June 21 at 7.30pm at Star Cinema Launceston.