Whannell Begins to Breed

By Jon Condit
July 30th, 2007

Our site and plenty of others have been keeping genre fans updated on all the latest from original Saw director James Wan ("Exclusive Death Sentence Images" – July 2007), but news about the next project from the star of that groundbreaking film (and Wan's frequent co-writer) Leigh Whannell has been scarce at best.

Thanks to Aussie news site news.com.au, we've recently learned that Whannell has returned home to begin filming Dying Breed, a low budget (less than $3 million) thriller in which he co-stars with Nathan (Wolf Creek, Snakes on a Plane) Phillips, Melanie Valejo, and Mirrah Foulkes. The film revolves around "four people conducting field research into the Tasmanian tiger who stumble across the descendants of a cannibal tribe."

Shooting on Dying Breed , which is being helmed by Jody Dwyer, starts July 31st about an hour's drive from Cradle Mountain (Tasmania's best known national park) with some scenes being filmed in Melbourne, and Whannell couldn't be happier for his mother land: "The guys making this film are really putting an area of Australia on the map that just hasn't been seen on film before."

There's no word on an official site or even a MySpace page yet for Dying Breed, but as soon as we hear anything else, so will you.

- Debi Moore