Walkabout (film) - Production Details

Production Details

The movie was the second feature directed by Nicolas Roeg. He had long planned to make a film of the novel Walkabout, in which the children are Americans stranded by a plane crash. After the indigenous boy finds and leads them to safety, he dies of a case of influenza contracted from them, as he has not been immunized. He had not been able to find a script he was happy with until English playwright Edward Bond did a minimal 14-page screenplay.

Roeg obtained backing from two American businessmen, Max Raab and Si Litvinoff, who incorporated a company in Australia but raised the budget entirely in the US and sold world rights to 20th Century Fox. Filming began in Sydney in August 1969 and later moved to Alice Springs.

Roeg, a British filmmaker, brought an outsider's eye and interpretation to the Australian setting, and improvised greatly during filming. He has commented, "We didn’t really plan anything—we just came across things by chance…filming whatever we found." The director's son, Luc Roeg, played the younger boy in the film.

In the USA, the film was originally rated R by the MPAA due to nudity, but was reduced to a GP-rating (PG) on appeal.

Actor David Gulpilil is miscredited in the film as David Gumpilil.

The Criterion Collection DVD release of the film is billed as the "original, unedited director’s cut".

The poem read at the end of the film is Poem 40 from A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad.