Development
In the early 1960s, Karel Reisz and Albert Finney announced plans to make a film about Ned Kelly from a screenplay by David Storey. Finney and Reisz flew to Australia in October 1962 and spent ten weeks picking locations and doing research. The movie was meant to be Finney's next project after Tom Jones (1963) with filming to start in March 1963. The British arm of Columbia Pictures agreed to put up the entire budget. However, British labour union regulations required a mostly British crew, and the cost of putting them up in Australia put the budget beyond what Columbia were willing to pay. (Tom Jones had yet to be released.) Italy and Spain were looked at as alternatives but the project was eventually abandoned. Finney and Reisz went on to make Night Must Fall (1964) instead.
The project passed on to Tony Richardson, who wrote the script in collaboration with Ian Jones, a writer and producer of TV drama from Melbourne who was an expert on Ned Kelly. According to Kevin Brownlow, Ian McKellen was originally set to play the lead but the producers went for Mick Jagger. "I am taking this film very seriously," said Jagger at the time. "Kelly wont look anything like me. You wait and you'll see what I look like. I want to concentrate on being a character actor."
During pre production, other filmmakers announced their own Ned Kelly projects including Tim Burstall, Gary Shead and Dino de Laurentiis.
Read more about this topic: Ned Kelly (1970 film)
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