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The first streaming service dedicated exclusively to Australian films will launch in the first half of 2016. Ozflix will aim to offer 250-400 titles initially, with producers receiving 50 per cent of each pay-per-view transaction. The long-term goal is to make available every Australian film from the 1900s to latest releases. That timetable will depend on how long it takes to convert hundreds of films to digital. The company directors are veteran distributor/producer and AFI-Aacta chair Alan Finney and producer/director Ron V. Brown. Brown tells If he first had the idea for an all-Australian streaming service five years ago. He pitched the concept to Foxtel and got a tepid response. Earlier this year he floated the proposal with Finney, who said, .We have to do this and do this now.. They put their plan to distributors at the Australian International Movie Convention, which was warmly received. The site will...

Never Tear Us Apart: The Untold Story of Inxs tunes up in Melbourne next week with a cast that blends newcomers and seasoned pros.

The four-hour miniseries for the Seven Network is the first drama from Shine Australia. The screenplay by Justin Monjo and Dave Warner is billed as the uncensored story of the iconic band.s rise to the top of the international charts and the aftermath of dealing with frontman Michael Hutchence.s death in 1997.

The band.s manager Cm Murphy is an executive producer and the filmmakers have been granted full access to their archive of music, photography and stories.

Luke Arnold, who stars as Long John Silver in the Michael Bay-produced pirate adventure series Black Sails for the Us network Starz, will play Hutchence. A graduate of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, his credits include McLeod's Daughters, Rush, Rescue: Special Ops, City Homicide...

Don Groves is a Deadline contributor based in Sydney. Exclusive: While two Australian producers are developing biopics of Inxs and the band’s late frontman Michael Hutchence, a TV miniseries may just steal their thunder. The Seven Network has commissioned Shine Australia to produce Never Tear Us Apart: The Inxs Story, a four-hour saga. The project hasn’t been formally announced but Deadline has learned shooting is due to start in Melbourne in mid-2013 and the producers have started searching for actors in their late teens or early 20s to play Hutchence (who died in a Sydney hotel room in 1997), and fellow band members, brothers Jon, Tim and Andrew Farriss, Kirk Pengilly and Gary Beers, plus their manager Chris Murphy. The miniseries may be finished and ready to air before either of the films is in the can. Producers Trevor Ray Field and Suzy Markovski and screenwriter/executive producer Robert...

Musical biopics are popping up all over the place with several announced over the holiday weekend.

First up, Fox Searchlight has acquired the life rights to "Britain’s Got Talent" sensation Susan Boyle along with the rights to the UK musical "I Dreamed A Dream" based on her story.

The plan is to reportedly combine the two to develop a re-imagined filmed version of the musical. No director or screenwriter has been attached as yet.

Then there's word that rocker Lenny Kravitz has emerged as director Julien Temple’s choice to play singer Marvin Gaye in a new biopic set towards the end of Gaye's life.

Having fled to London and hopelessly addicted to drugs and alcohol, music promoter Freddy Couseart took Gaye to his flat in Belgium and sorted him out. The result was the album 'Midnight Love' which featured the iconic single "Sexual Healing".

Finally, not one but...

The life and death of legendary Inxs front man, Michael Hutchence, will be documented in a new Australian feature film. It has taken a decade for a screenwriter and production team to bring the story to screen, and today, on the fifteenth anniversary of Hutchence.s death, it has been announced the project has officially commenced. The film, which is supported by members of.the Hutchence family, will be an adaptation of the book Just a Man: the real Michael Hutchence which was first released in 2000 and written by Hutchence.s sister, Tina Hutchence, and his late mother, Paulina Glassop. It chronicles the star.s journey from a talented young child growing up in a complicated family to.the formation of Inxs, his relationships with scores of famous women, and finally, his suicide in a Sydney hotel room in 1997. Australian writer/producer Robert Lewis Galinsky (Dust and Glory) is writing...

The life and death of legendary Inxs front man, Michael Hutchence, will be documented in a new Australian feature film. It has taken a decade for a screenwriter and production team to bring the story to screen, and today, on the fifteenth anniversary of Hutchence.s death, it has been announced the project has officially commenced. The film, which is supported by members of.the Hutchence family, will be an adaptation of the book Just a Man: the real Michael Hutchence which was first released in 2000 and written by Hutchence.s sister, Tina Hutchence, and his late mother, Paulina Glassop. It chronicles the star.s journey from a talented young child growing up in a complicated family to.the formation of Inxs, his relationships with scores of famous women, and finally, his suicide in a Sydney hotel room in 1997. Australian writer/producer Robert Lewis Galinsky (Dust and Glory) is writing...