The actress turned director will be filming during the cup carnival next month ahead of the main shoot next year.

"We're banking some footage this racing season," Griffiths says. "We're waiting on Andrew Knight (The Water Diviner, Hacksaw Ridge) to deliver our first draft with Elise McCredie (Nowhere Boys, Strange Fits of Passion).

"They're writing it together so it's a beautiful balance. Andrew has got such love and understanding of that country Australian, old-fashioned voice and he writes about men so tenderly. And Elise is really getting the feisty female."

Griffiths, soon to be seen in Mel Gibson's war drama Hacksaw Ridge, says she will cast the movie once the script is delivered.

"I think you get the best cast when you've got the best script," she says. "People are certainly aware of the story and know that the script will be landing."

Griffiths has high hopes for her feature directing debut.

"It's a great story," she says. "It's very aspirational. It's going to be very positive. Positive for girls, positive for people who love sport. I want to make the great Australian sports movie."

Pacific Rim stays in Sydney despite Chinese announcement

Still down for a Sydney shoot ... John Boyega in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

From a splashy announcement in Los Angeles, it seemed that China's massive new movie studio had nabbed the Pacific Rim sequel shoot from Sydney.

The chairman of the Wanda group, Wang Jianlin, unveiled plans for a 30-soundstage development in Qingdao, in Shandong Province, that would not only offer a handsome new 40 per cent rebate for production but would be the filming location for Pacific Rim: Maelstrom and Godzilla 2.

Costing a spectacular $US8.2 billion ($10.7 billion), the Qingdao Movie Metropolis will include the world's largest indoor soundstage, a convention centre, shopping mall, six resort hotels, four indoor theme parks, a marina and Asia's largest cinema with 5,300 seats.

Wang wants the studio to make China a competitor on the global stage, with facilities that could draw production away from London or Australia.

But it seems that only part of the Pacific Rim sequel will shoot in China, with what an industry insider is calling "the vast majority" still shooting at Sydney's Fox Studios. Currently in pre-production, it is expected to shoot until March.

John Boyega, who played stormtrooper Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, will star in the sequel to Guillermo del Toro's 2013 sci-fi action blockbuster, with the cast also including Scott Eastwood, Ron Perlman and Max Martini.

There is a logical China connection, though, with Wanda owning Legendary Pictures, which is producing Pacific Rim: Maelstrom.

Steven S. DeKnight, best known for executive producing the TV series Smallville, Spartacus and Daredevil, will take over directing the sequel from del Toro, who remains writer and producer.

Movie about the first tomb of the unknown soldier

The team behind The King's Speech will make what's described as an inspiring film about the British priest who created the first Tomb of the Unknown Soldier after World War I.

Screen Australia is funding screenwriter Jan Sardi, best known for Shine and The Secret River, to write The Unknown Soldier.

It centres on the Reverend David Railton who created the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior to help heal a nation grieving after the Great War.

The film will be produced by See-Saw Films, which is also behind Top of the Lake and Garth Davis' coming Australian film Lion.

The rising director has since moved onto the biblical drama Mary Magdalene, which will star Rooney Mara in the title role, Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus Christ and, depending on negotiations, Chiwetel Ejiofor as the apostle Peter.

Dingo hunt and deaths in custody among new crop of indigenous films

Aaron McGrath and Levi Miller in Jasper Jones.

You could run through a strong list that includes Samson & Delilah, The Sapphires, Mystery Road, Goldstone, Redfern Now, Clever Man and Rachel Perkins' Jasper Jones, which reaches cinemas next March.

Indigenous storytelling has become one of the real strengths of Australian film and television.

And that looks set to continue, judging by the latest batch of development funding by Screen Australia.

With Mike Jones writing, Catriona McKenzie is to direct Dingo, a supernatural thriller about a female indigenous professional shooter recruited to hunt for a pack of dingoes blamed for a series of human disappearances on Fraser Island.

And Stephen Sewell is writing the crime drama The Blue Tin for director Adrian Wills, which is enigmatically described as "Deaths in custody – a love story."

McKenzie and Wills are two of the directors on another promising project that has started filming, the ABC comedy series The Warriors.

Created by Tony Briggs and Robert Connolly, it centres on two indigenous Aussie Rules recruits (played by Gordan Churchill and Nelson Baker) who share a house, with the cast also including Lisa McCune, Vince Colosimo and John Howard.

Muslim romantic comedy debuts

Helana Sawires and Osamah Sami in Ali's Wedding Photo: Ben Timothy.

A film jauntily described as Australia's first Muslim rom-com, Ali's Wedding, will have its world premiere as part of a pop-up version of the Adelaide Film Festival later this month.

Writer and star Osamah Sami based the film on his own experience of having an arranged marriage that lasted just one hour and 40 minutes.

Directed by Jeffrey Walker, who is currently shooting Dance Academy: The Movie, the romantic comedy centres on Ali pretending to be a medical student to live up to his father's expectations then falling in love with one woman while promised to another one.

It started to build buzz ahead of a cinema release next year when Sami and Andrew Knight won most outstanding original feature film script at the Awgie Awards last week, with Shaun Grant and Craig Silvey winning the adaptation award for Jasper Jones.

At what's being called AFF Goes Rogue, which runs from October 27 to 30, David Stratton will introduce a "work in progress" screening of his documentary series Stories Of Australian Cinema.

Inferno flickers, Mastermind flops

Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones in Inferno. Photo: Jonathan Prime.

The first movie based on Dan Brown's Robert Langdon novels, The Da Vinci Code, was a phenomenon a decade ago.

It opened with a strong $8.6 million on on the way to taking a brisk $27 million.

But the latest Tom Hanks adventure, Inferno, had only a so-so opening in Australian cinemas on the weekend.

It took $2.2 million (average $5,800 per cinema) which kept it behind The Girl On The Train's $2.6 million (averaging $9,300) on its second weekend.

With little publicity, the long-delayed Zach Galifianakis-Kristen Wiig comedy Masterminds predictably flopped with just $613,000 (averaging $3,400) on a flat weekend for box office.

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