The life of trailblazing Australian singer Helen Reddy is headed for the big screen in a film called I Am Woman.

Producer Rosemary Blight, best known for The Sapphires, Lockie Leonard and the coming TV series Cleverman, is planning a musical bio-pic centring on Reddy's success in America.

After arriving in New York as a single mother in 1966, Reddy had such hits as the feminist anthem I Am Woman, Delta Dawn and Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress), becoming the first Australian-born artist to have a number one hit and selling more than 25 million albums around the world.

Unjoo Moon (The Zen of Bennett) will direct, with her Oscar-winning husband Dion Beebe (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha) as cinematographer.

With a script by Emma Jensen (A Storm In The Stars), casting is under way.

Inspired by Australian rock critic and feminist Lillian Roxon, Reddy wrote I Am Woman with Ray Burton, with its powerful lyrics becoming an anthem for the women's movement in the 1970s: "I am woman, hear me roar/In numbers too big to ignore/And I know too much to go back an' pretend/'Cause I've heard it all before/And I've been down there on the floor/No one's ever gonna keep me down again."

Blight tells Short Cuts that Reddy's achievements were extraordinary.

"The way she conquered America, Australians - and even the world - don't recognise what she actually did, having four Billboard number one hits," she says. "We're fascinated by the woman who wrote a song that resonates still today."

Blight says the film has been in development before calls for more films centring on women.

"There's a large female audience out there who want to see themselves on screen, who want to be able to identify. This is a very, very powerful celebratory story with great music about a great woman so it ticks all those boxes.

"And it's not just a period film. What she spoke to, what she struggled through and why she wrote that song are really, really relevant today."

Battle for Academy board slot

The vote to fill a vacant board position at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts has become surprisingly political.

The chief executive of the Australian Directors Guild, Kingston Anderson, is publicly lobbying for guild president Samantha Lang to fill the spot vacated by Universal Pictures Australasia managing director Mike Baard.

He is concerned the only board member who is making films and television programs is Noni Hazlehurst .

"It seems to be a board that aren't doing the actual making of the stuff they're giving awards to," Anderson says. "It's just crazy. It will be great to have another filmmaker on the board."

The other candidates for the board are producer Michael Hilliard, agent Mark Morrissey and recruitment firm founder Patricia Powell-Hughes.

Anderson says there has been discussion about the future of the awards among guild members.

"A lot of people have said they don't understand why there are international awards in Los Angeles which only seem to have American and Australian films considered ... it seems to be a PR exercise as opposed to an actual award so there's some concern there.

"We want Sam to go on the board to have those discussions: where are the awards going, how are they working and what's the future of the awards?"

Academy chief executive Damien Trewhella says he welcomes discussion about the awards' future and defends the international event.

"It's a global Australian Academy and part of it is that global conversation about quality at that important part of the year," he says.

Voting closes next Monday.

Samuel down for new thriller

Scene from A Few Less Men.

As well as sequel to the hit comedy A Few Best Men, which is seeking buyers in the Cannes Film Festival market, Xavier Samuel has signed on to a new thriller that will shoot in South Australia from next month.

Having broken into Hollywood with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and Fury, Samuel will star in Bad Blood opposite Morgan Griffin from San Andreas and Charlie & Boots.

The story centres on a veterinarian who, while on a long weekend away with her author fiancee, finds herself battling a psychopathic killer.

David Pulbrook (Last Dance) is directing with Antony I. Ginnane (Patrick) and David Lightfoot (Wolf Creek) producing.

"I first filmed in South Australia in 1980 with The Survivor and we were all extraordinarily impressed with the quality of the crew and support facilities," says Ginnane. "Since then I have been back multiple times, notably with The Lighthorsemen and Sally Marshall Is Not An Alien."

The sequel to A Few Best Men, Mark Lamprell's A Few Less Men, centres on three friends who are stranded in the Australian bush while trying to transport their mate's coffin back to London. It is being pitched to buyers in Cannes while in post-production.

Edgerton directs in Mexico City

Australian director and stuntman Nash Edgerton is shooting a new film in Mexico City with an impressive cast that includes his brother Joel, Charlize Theron, David Oyelowo, Amanda Seyfried, Thandie Newton and Sharlto Copley.

The untitled action-comedy centres on a businessman (Oyelowo) who seems to be living the American dream with a new wife and a stake in a pharmaceutical company that's about to go public. But when everything falls apart, he ends up stranded south of the border, discovering that his seemingly perfect life never really existed.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, it's a film backed by Amazon Studios which is also behind Woody Allen's Cannes opener Cafe Society and Nicolas Winding Refn's Neon Demon in partnership with STX Entertainment, which released Joel Edgerton's directing debut, The Gift, last year.

Since his feature debut with the crime thriller The Square in 2008, the versatile Edgerton has directed shorts and music videos, acted in such films as Zero Dark Thirty and The Rover and performed stunts in the likes of The Great Gatsby, Straight Outta Compton and The Nice Guys.

Alien actor has photo exhibition

Detail from Girls Looking At Boys. Photo: Benjamin Rigby

Actor Benjamin Rigby, who has been filming Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant in Sydney, also works as a photographer.

And an exhibition of his recent work, Greetings from California, opens in Melbourne this week. It will run in conjunction with Passenger, another show by a photographer with movie connections, cinematographer Ryan Alexander Lloyd.

The images in Greetings from California were taken when Rigby visited Los Angeles. He says he was drawn to the flamboyant colours and aesthetic of the place but also to its distinctive dark undertones, aspects he has sought to evoke with a sense of both nostalgia and irony.

Greetings From California and Passenger are at Besser Space in Collingwood from Friday to May 27 - Philippa Hawker.

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