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Marta Dusseldorp as Janet King..

The third season of Screentime.s ABC drama Janet King, starring Marta Dusseldorp, goes into production this week.

Joining the established cast of Damian Walshe-Howling, Peter Kowitz, Christopher Morris, Andrea Demetriades, Anita Hegh and Hamish Michael for the third instalment will be Don Hany, Robert Mammone, Susie Porter, Andrew Ryan, Huw Higginson, John Bach, Steve Le Marquand, Arka Das and Adam Demos.

This season, Janet will confront .a hornet.s nest of illegal gambling, organised crime and money laundering, while investigating the tragic death of a young sports star..

Written by Greg Haddrick, Felicity Packard, and Niki Aken with Alexa Wyatt as writer/script producer, the season will be directed by Peter Andrikidis, Grant Brown and Catherine Millar.

Janet King is produced by Karl Zwicky and Lisa Scott with Hilary Bonney and Marta Dusseldrop as associate producers. Screentime.s Haddrick, ABC.s Sally Riley and Kym Goldsworthy are executive producers.

Janet King season 2 begins production this week with Marta Dusseldorp reprising her lead role.

In the second series, King is seconded from the Dpp to lead a Royal Commission into a deadly upsurge in gun crime..

King is joined by conscripting solicitors Richard Stirling (Hamish Michael) and Lina Badir (Andrea Demetriades), and the ambitious Owen Mitchell (Damian Walshe-Howling) as Counsel Assisting.

With coercive powers Detective Andy Campbell (Christopher Morris) can only dream of, King and her team peel back the complex layers of intrigue underpinning the illicit trade in weapons..

Completing the cast are Peter Kowitz, Leah Purcell, Terry Serio, Philip Quast, Anita Hegh, Aaron Jeffrey, Genevieve Hegney, Nicholas Hope and Ewen Leslie.

The series is produced by Screentime, a Banijay Group company, and series produced by Karl Zwicky, produced by Lisa Scott, with Hilary Bonney and Marta Dusseldorp as associate producers, and Greg Haddrick as executive producer..

It is written by Haddrick,...

Producer Hayden Fortescue believes his action comedy Broken Contract is the first Wa-shot feature to have been shot almost entirely without paper.

Christopher Morris (Offspring, Crownies) plays Max, a down-on-his-luck club owner who hires a hit man for protection after a local gang threatens his livelihood and his family.

Esther Anderson (Siberia, Home and Away) plays the detective who gets involved after Max.s friends and enemies start disappearing.

Fortescue set out to save money by emailing contracts, Oh&S and medical reports and call sheets, and issuing digital invoices and receipts.

During the shoot in Perth in April/May, writer-director James Pentecost used an iPad that held everything he needed . script, schedules, notes and an app that allowed him to pre-plan the set-ups for every scene.

Dispensing with traditional storyboards, he and DoP Ross Metcalf used the app, Hollywood Shot Designer, to figure out when and where every light,...

Apparently John Cusack is trying to corner the market on moderately budgeted/essentially straight-to-vod action movies. I’m honestly not sure when this started, but man, I’m seeing Cusack in a ton of these films. His latest is “Drive Hard” from director Brian Trenchard-Smith, which has Cusack on better form than most of the films I’ve seen him in lately. At least here he seems to be having some fun. The flick co-stars the Punisher himself Thomas Jane, though here looking very un-Punisher like. I’m also not entirely sure what I think about the ’80s vibe. What is this, a throwback action movie? Former race car driver Peter Roberts (Thomas Jane) traded the winner’s circle for a 9 to 5 job as a beginners’ driving instructor. But his life shifts into overdrive when Simon Keller (John Cusack) hijacks Peter to be his getaway driver in a $9 million heist.

Welcome to the first in a new feature here on Nerdly where we take a look at some of the weeks new releases in smaller, more succinct capsule reviews with a rating to let you know whether to Rent, Buy, or wait for Netflix and/or other streaming services…

Demon Legacy

Stars: Anna Maria Demara, Kati Sharp, Grant Alan, Nancy McCrumb, Cortney Palm | Written by Tracy Morse | Directed by Rand Vossler

In a remote mountain lodge, ­ five college friends are spending time together to help one of them get over a break up. After a late night drunken party the friends decide to play with a Ouija board, with terrible consequences. An unholy evil is unleashed and the friends must battle evil and each other, as the lines between reality and imagination blur the struggle to save them begins.

Demon Legacy has one hell of a pedigree: a first-time feature from director Rand Vossler who,...

Esther Anderson..

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After playing policewoman Charlie Buckton in Home and Away for five years, with a one- year gap after her character was killed off and later appeared in a vision, Esther Anderson is playing a cop in Broken Contract, an action comedy now shooting in Perth.

There are similarities between the characters but there is one major difference, apart from the milieu. In Broken Contract she.s a detective who investigates threats from a local gang to Max (Offspring and Crownies. Christopher Morris), a down-on-his luck club owner, and his family. Max.s response is to hire a hit man (Jag Pannu).

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Esther describes her character, Detective Keeling, as .strong, very smart and by-the-book, with a bit of a mouth..

The Los Angeles-based actor and former model didn.t hesitate when writer-director James Pentecost offered her the role, her first feature, which appealed to her as .a fun project,...

Chelsea Williamson and Rebecca Robinson are the latest among a crop of young Western Australian actors who are striving for international careers.

Williamson, who.s 20, has signed with a Los Angeles-based manager and will play a key character named Tiffany in Broken Contract, writer-director James Pentecost.s action comedy that starts shooting in Perth on April 28.

Christopher Morris (Crownies, Janet King) plays Max, a down-on-his-luck club owner struggling to make ends meet. When a local gang threatens his livelihood and his family, he hires a hit man to protect the ones he loves. Tiffany is a bartender in a seedy strip joint who is trying to make ends meet while trying to find a missing family member.

Robinson, 22, is the first Australian in some years to be selected to take part in the Master.s program for film at the Royal Central School for Speech and Drama in London.

Before she departs for London,...

Janet King/Crownies regular Christopher Morris and Home and Away.s Esther Anderson play the leads in Broken Contract, an action comedy that starts shooting in Perth on April 28.

It.s the second feature from writer-director James Pentecost, whose debut was Twisted Minds, and the third from Jag Pannu Productions, in association with Vcr Media.

The producer is Hayden Fortescue. Jag Pannu Productions made the thrillers Twisted Minds (which stars John Howard, Kyle Morrison and Jessica Hegarty) and Loren Johnson.s Raven.s Cabin.

Morris plays Max, a down-on-his-luck club owner struggling to make ends meet. When a local gang threatens his livelihood and his family, he hires a hit man to protect the ones he loves. However he soon finds himself spinning out of control as friends and enemies alike start disappearing.

Anderson plays Detective Keeling and Jag Pannu portrays the hit man. Anderson recently participated in Siberia, a...

They’re not the most likely on-screen duo, but John Cusack and Thomas Jane strike up a winning chemistry in the new teaser trailer for “Drive Hard.”

Slated to hit theaters later this year, the action-comedy also stars Damien Garvey, Zoe Ventoura, Mary O’Neill and Christopher Morris.

Per the synopsis, “A former race car driver is abducted by a mysterious thief and forced to be the wheel-man for a crime that puts them both in the sights of the cops and the mob.”

Check out the preview for “Drive Hard” below and stay linked to the GossipCenter for all the pre-release buzz!

What the hell has happened to John Cusack? Remember the glory days of Say Anything, Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity and Being John Malkovich? Now he is giving us nonsense like The Raven, The Paperboy and this, Drive Hard. Above is the first trailer for Drive Hard, a crime thriller fronted by Cusack and Thomas Jane, that somehow stayed completely off our radar until now. It's a buddy comedy that follows the wild ride of a mysterious thief (Cusack) who kidnaps a race car driver turned driver's ed instructor (Jane), so he can be a reluctant getaway driver. Along the way, this odd couple will cross paths and piss off cops and gangsters. Damien Garcey, Christopher Morris, and Zoe Walker co-star. The Playlist has unearthed a couple of stills from the film, which you can see below. The first one has Cusack double-fisting a pair of guns, and in a...

The ABC has begun production of a new legal series which will showcase the talent of Australia’s acting talent pool.

The announcement:

Marta Dusseldorp (A Place to Call Home, Jack Irish, Crownies) returns as Senior Crown Prosecutor Janet King in the title role of the powerful new eight hour mini-series for ABC1, which begins production today.

Joining the cast are Vince Colosimo (Underbelly, The Great Gatsby) as Chief Superintendent Jack Rizzoli, and Damian Walshe-Howling (Underbelly, Brothers In Arms, The Time of Our Lives) as Owen Mitchell, a rising star prosecutor – each crucial in Janet’s campaign to expose the truth behind a shocking murder that strikes at the very heart of the justice system.

Also appearing in the compelling high stakes legal thriller are John Howard (Fury Road, Packed to the Rafters, All Saints), Sonia Todd (Rake, Home and Away, McLeod’s Daughters), Jessica Napier (Sea Patrol, McLeod’s Daughters), Deborah Kennedy (Rake,...

ABC Crownies spin-off, Janet King, has started production.

The eight-hour legal mini-series marks the return of Marta Dusseldorp (A Place to Call Home, Jack Irish) as Crownies senior crown prosecutor Janet King.

Joining the cast are Vince Colosimo (Underbelly) as chief superintendent Jack Rizzoli and Damian Walshe-Howling (Underbelly) as rising star prosecutor Owen Mitchell..Other new cast members include John Howard (Packed to the Rafters), Sonia Todd (Rake), Jessica Napier (Sea Patrol), Deborah Kennedy (Rake) and Tiriel Mora (Rake).

Former Crownies cast members who are returning include Hamish Michael, Ella Scott Lynch, Andrea Demetriades, Peter Kowitz, Christopher Morris, Indiana Evans, Jeanette Cronin, Aimee Pedersen and Lewis Fitz-Gerald.

The series is being produced by Screentime for the ABC.

Screentime.s executive chairman, Des Monaghan said: .Screentime is delighted that the strength of this production has attracted such an outstanding calibre of cast, to realise characters both new and returning. They will...