"I hate ATMs telling me 'insufficient funds'," one said 12 years ago. "Every time I go to an ATM, I'm like '$200'. 'Insufficient funds'. 'OK, $100'. 'Insufficient funds'. How about $50? Give me $50!"

But times have certainly changed for Leigh Whannell – the ATM guy – and film school buddy James Wan. After scraping together enough savings to shoot a scene, taking a DVD to Los Angeles then getting backing from a production company, they had a huge hit with the horror film Saw in 2004.

Shot for $US1.2 million, it took $US104 million at the worldwide box office. With five sequels the duo executive produced, Saw became the highest-grossing horror franchise in cinema history – taking a mighty $US873 million so far. A sixth sequel opens next year.

Wan has become a prolific and successful director, firstly of horror films, including two instalments of The Conjuring and Insidious movies, then switching genres to make Fast & Furious 7.

It could have been a disaster when star Paul Walker died during filming but, after a hiatus and using inspired digital effects to recreate his character, it took a phenomenal $US1.5 billion last year. It is still the sixth highest-grossing movie in cinema history. Wan has also moved into producing such horror hits as Annabel and Lights Out as well as the TV series MacGyver.

Whannell, a former presenter of the ABC show Recovery, has continued acting and writing – creating the Insidious horror movies with Wan then branching out into directing with the third instalment. Now, just as they turn 40, the two friends will be back home directing new films in the new year.

Wan will shoot Aquaman, the Warner Bros-DC Comics superhero movie, on the Gold Coast after a $22 million funding leg-up from the federal government. It will star Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones), Amber Heard and Patrick Wilson. And in another deal announced in the past week, Whannell will shoot the sci-fi thriller Stem in Melbourne. He also wrote the script about a paralysed technophobe (Logan Marshall-Green from Prometheus) who avenges his wife's murder in the near future with the help of an experimental computer chip implant.

With the big-budget action fantasy movie Pacific Rim: Maelstrom continuing to shoot at Sydney's Fox Studios and Will Gluck's Peter Rabbit starting in the new year – following on from Hacksaw Ridge and Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant – the country's three big studios will all be busy.

After the HBO TV series The Leftovers shot this year, Stem will be joined at Melbourne's Docklands Studios by the Spierig brothers' supernatural thriller Winchester, with Helen Mirren playing the millionaire heiress to the Winchester Arms fortune who built a famous mansion that's considered to be haunted. Studio boss Rod Allen says it will also host the ABC comedy series Ronny Chieng: International Student and possibly another Australian film.

Way back in 2004: Leigh Whannell and James Wan when Saw became a hit. Photo: Joe Armao

Aquaman will take over the Gold Coast's Village Roadshow Studios from Thor: Ragnarok, Kong: Skull Island and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

The lower value of the Australian dollar has clearly made the country a more attractive location for international films. But what's often under-appreciated is how much the federal government's producer offset, a tax rebate that allows Australian films to get back 40 per cent of their budgets, is luring back the likes of Whannell, the Spierig brothers and Mel Gibson to shoot films here.

Studio bosses renew calls to increase incentive

While their soundstages are heavily booked in the new year, the country's studio executives have renewed calls for an increase in the federal government incentive to attract international productions after the $22 million deal to land Hollywood superhero movie Aquaman.

Docklands Studios chief executive Rod Allen believes the 40 per cent rebate being offered by China's new Qingdao mega studio shows how far Australia has slipped behind the rest of the world. He supports AusFilm's call for the location offset to be increased from 16.5 per cent to 30 per cent. Allen says one-off cash injections, which have previously attracted Thor: Ragnarok and Alien: Covenant and now Aquaman, make it more difficult to market Australia as a filming location.

"What international producers want is a degree of certainty," he says. "It's much easier for us to market Australia is we can say this is what [the incentive] will be ... We've got three main studios in the country and what we'd like in Victoria is to get our share of international production."

The chief executive of Fox Studios, Wayne Borg, agrees. "We are not as competitive as many other jurisdictions around the world," he says. "The ad hoc incentives are certainly welcome but from an industry perspective, it would help if we've got greater clarity and certainty around the process."

Rogue One dominates cinemas

Ben Mendelsohn in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.Photo: Jonathan Olley

In a triumph of marketing over movie quality, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has had a strong opening in Australian cinemas.

The spin-off took $14.7 million – averaging $15,800 – from a phenomenal 932 cinemas. That's almost half the country's 2000-odd screens, which shows how dominant blockbusters have become in both multiplexes and art-houses.

But ticket sales for Rogue One were still barely half of those for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which opened with $27.2 million (averaging almost $29,000) in 941 cinemas a year ago. While the spin-off takes its time to deliver on screen, it took a bumper $US290 million worldwide including $US155 million in North America on the weekend.

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