"Without putting too fine a point on it, John Marsden’s Tomorrow series of books is hot shit. Generations of readers have devoured them, studied them, loved their beaten, tattered tomes to death. It’s a big deal that Ellie and friends have arrived on the big screen Tomorrow manages to be a hell of a lot more intelligent, exciting and mature than most films made with a teen audience in mind. A ripper of a story and well-drawn, ordinary young people with everything at stake." Darryn King THE VINE "I haven't read the book. The theme is very, very similar to John Milius's film RED DAWN made, I think, in 1984 from memory, which is about a Russian invasion of America and how young people take to the hills and become guerrilla warriors against the invaders. So it was a bit of a deja vu situation for me. It's a very slick film but I couldn't believe this group of friends. I'm sure a lot of people will enjoy it but there was something, as I say, slightly off key that I can't quite put my finger on." Davis Stratton ABC AT THE MOVIES "A classic Australian novel gets thumbs up on the big screen as eight teens from a small country town are unexpectedly thrown headlong into an adventure of massive proportions. A mix of a teen movie, fantasy adventure and action thriller, this is an impressive debut for Beattie, offering a natural opportunity for a sequel. It's a likeable film with a good premise and a nice vibe." Louise Keller URBAN CINEFILE "Home and Away with machine guns or the birth of a thrilling, action-packed Australian franchise? There is a lot riding on Tomorrow When The War Began, the first movie adaptation of John Marsden’s hugely successful series of tween war novels. Luckily the set pieces win the day, aided by shattering sound design and breathtaking cinematography. Action-packed and thrilling to the max but TWTWB is let down by its inexperienced cast and surprisingly clunky dialogue." David Michael Brown EMPIRE MAGAZINE

"The breezy tone of the establishing scenes plays like any teenage adventure movie, with the characters jostling and joshing with each other. If you've read the book all of this will be familiar and the revelations won't be fresh. There are some tense highlights and great technical work, including Ben Nott's high class cinematography, while the crucial and spectacular explosion in the last third of the film will resonate with its target audience." Andrew L Urban URBAN CINEFILE "As the opening instalment of what later became a best-selling series, author John Marsden’s 1993 novel "Tomorrow, When the War Began" has been a prized read for an entire generation of young Australians. So there is more than just an eight-figure production budget at stake here. For a first-time director, Australian Stuart Beattie does a fair job of keeping this far-fetched fluff as credible as it can be. The action sequences (and the special-effects driving them) are particularly well-handled, even if the sheer number of ka-boom-worthy explosions is a touch too much." Leigh Paatsch HERALD SUN "You can understand the appeal of the book to young adults, because it shows the resourcefulness and humanity of the young in the face of something terrible. Stuart Beattie handles the action well, I think he's less adept at handling the development of character, but I'm sure the numerous fans of the book will be satisfied with the movie. I actually think that for a first time director to take on a cast with such limited experience of film was really bold and a bit risky." Margaret Pomeranz ABC AT THE MOVIES "I was delighted to find how much of Marsden's story and dialogue has been preserved in Stuart Beattie's screen adaptation. This combination of the ordinary and the unexpected which makes good imaginative fiction: the film gets it right. And Beattie unfolds the drama at a satisfying pace. The film may disturb some liberal preconceptions: the unnamed 'invaders' look vaguely Asiatic: invoking ghosts of Australian paranoia about the 'yellow peril'. This film is compelling." Julie Rigg ABC RADIO MOVIETIME

The Inside Story In a twenty-one year writing career John Marsden has written and edited more than thirty books, which have sold four million copies world-wide and been translated into fourteen languages. His novels include "So Much to Tell You", "Tomorrow, When the War Began", and his non-fiction titles include "Secret Men's Business" and "Everything I Know About Writing". John has won every major writing award in Australia for young peoples fiction. Internationally, he has twice been named among Best Books of the Year by the American Library Association and once by Publishers Weekly (U.S.A.). He recently became only the fifth author to receive the Lloyd ONeill Award for lifetime services to Australian publishing (the other four being Peter Carey, Ruth Park, Morris West and Tom Keneally). Marsden has also won the Grand Jury Prize as Austria's Most Popular Writer for Teenagers, and in Germany, the coveted Buxtehuder Bulle: an award given biennially for the best young person's book in the world for the preceding two years. The popular 'Tomorrow series' of seven titles has sold over two and a half million copies and has been translated into seven languages. Since its release in 1993, Marsden always knew there was something about" Tomorrow, When The War Began" that seemed to jump off the page. "I did realise writing Tomorrow, When The War Began and the other books that there was a very visual quality to them that not many of my other books have. Even as I was writing it I could see a movie in my head and that made it different from my other books. In this book the characters seemed very real to me from the moment I started writing them and they were jumping off the page and seemed almost three-dimensional." One of the reasons Marsden wrote the novel was to portray young people as being capable of achieving great things. He believes that a key difference between young Australians in the 1940s and today is that children today are not growing up with the imminent threat of war and conflict. "The fact that people nowadays aren't given the chance to be heroic doesn't mean that they can't be heroic: it just means that the opportunities don't come along. No-one wants a war and no-one wants to be caught in a bushfire or a flood or some really demanding situation, but at the same time when you are in those situations it?s important to know that you do have the right stuff, that if you dig deep you will find a kind of resilience and stamina and capacity for heroism that you may never have been aware of in yourself." Producer Michael Boughen was originally drawn to the project on two levels: "Firstly the enormous success of the book series made this project an ideal platform for a feature film. My son Matthew had asked me to make a film of it back in 2000 so I was aware of the popularity of the books. The amazing literary success meant there is a large potential audience who hopefully want to see the film. The second reason I was attracted to the project was to produce a film with a budget that would allow me to do justice to the story. It's a big, bold story and needed to be a big, bold film." Originally, Marsden wasn't keen on the idea of a movie and strongly resisted attempts to do so. "In the end probably got approached by around one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty film companies. Every few weeks there would be another letter or email or phone call from someone enquiring if the rights were available and expressing interest and I kept turning them down because I wanted it left alone. But in the end I got talked into it by people who really had a commitment to the books, who really loved the stories, loved the characters and talked about the books with passion." In the beginning, Marsden wanted the book to be able to stand by itself. So what was it that would later change his mind? "I thought if it's ever going to happen, Stuart Beattie would be someone I would trust to do it and so here we are now." When he came around to the idea of a film adaptation, Marsden toyed with the idea of writing the screenplay himself. "I did have ideas about writing a screenplay for it or getting involved in the making of the movie but I knew if I did that I would have to go through a very long process because writing a screenplay is as different as writing a poem is to writing a short story. It's like getting a psychiatrist to revive you when you have had a cardiac arrest: even though they are all doctors it doesn't necessarily mean that one will have any expertise in the other field." Executive Producer Christopher Mapp ("The Bank Job" & "Bran Nue Dae") and director Stuart Beattie had been friends since their school days and it was Christopher who introduced Stuart to producer Michael Boughen ("Dying Breed"). "I sent Stuart the books and he read them all within a fortnight and said he was in. He wrote the script and then said he would like to direct," Boughen ("The Loved Ones") recalls. The rest, as they say, is history." When accomplished screenwriter ("Shutter", "Collateral" & "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra") and soon to be a debut director Beattie, met with Marsden about adapting the novel, the author finally felt comfortable handing over the film and leaving its on-screen portrayal up to Beattie. "I have the greatest respect for Stuart, I think he is a tremendous human being and his integrity and his skill is undoubted," Marsden stated. "If someone has both of those things going for them I am pretty comfortable with whatever comes out of that." Boughen recall that after Omnilab Media secured the rights, he, Beattie, Andrew Mason, Michael Boughen and Mapp travelled to Victoria to discuss the screenplay in more detail with the author at his school, Candlebark. "John is a wonderfully clear thinker who right from day one realised we were never going to bring everything in the book to life in one hundred minutes. It was a film, a very different medium to anything he had worked with before, but he was extremely comfortable with handing over his book and allowing us to adapt it. I have had a lot of contact with John over the years regarding this project and get on well with him. Stuart had written a wonderful script, so I organised a trip for us to meet with John. I think I was most nervous when we were all sitting in John's office at his school." Beattie says the decision to make his directorial debut with a much-loved novel was an easy one. "I was instantly attracted to this project because I was looking to make a character-based but commercial action movie set in Australia that could compete on the international stage. Tomorrow, When The War Began has all the action, but also has the heart. Ellie and her friends are all wonderful, complex, engaging characters who make the ride worth so much more than the price of admission." Boughen admits funding the project was a double-edged sword. He recalls, "there was cautiousness about whether it would work as a big film. Early on I had the total commitment by Mike Selwyn at Paramount who threw all his support behind the project, but the real turning point was when Stuart Beattie agreed to write the screenplay and then come on board as the director. Screen Australia and NSW DSRD were able to support the project. Ultimately, however, the film was made because Omnilab Media's Managing Director Christopher Mapp and Chairman Grahame Mapp believed in the project and supported it financially." The first person to be cast was nineteen-year-old Australian actress Caitlin Stasey, who plays the pivotal lead character Ellie Linton. "There was an exhaustive audition process and I have been privileged to see some very talented young actors. I was ecstatic! I have a lot of respect for Ellie's character and feel privileged to be playing such an inspirational young female role." For British actress Rachel Hurd-Wood ("Perfume: The Story of a Murderer"), the hardest part about portraying her character Corrie, was to master a convincing Aussie accent. "I had a voice coach and Melissa the acting coach was brilliant: she always picked me up when I got things wrong. And everybody on set was brilliant." Lincoln Lewis (who played Geoff Campbell on the 7 Netwrok series, "Home and Away" admits this is his dream role. "I'm an enormous fan of the books. My brother and I would race each other to read all the books in the series. I have always dreamed of the books being made into a film." Phoebe Tonkin, who was cast as Fiona Maxwell, is best known for her role as the mermaid Cleo in the enormously successful TV series "H2O – Just Add Water", which airs in over one hundred and twenty territories. "I got sent the script from my agency and it was quite a long audition process. I went to four auditions. I even auditioned for Robyn!" Like most of his fellow cast mates, Deniz Akdeniz (Raff in "As the Bell Rings") was a fan of the Tomorrow series long before starring in the film adaptation seemed a possibility. "I've been reading the books since I was twelve," says the actor who plays Homer Yannos. "I even remember two years ago telling my mate it would make a fantastic film. Then I heard auditions were coming around and everyone was going crazy to get into that room. I went to the audition on a Friday and then got the role the following Tuesday. I'm very fortunate because I was a late addition to the casting process." For sixteen year old Ashleigh Cummings, landing a role of Robyn Mathers in the film was a dream come true. "I was at school and my agent left a message on my phone saying I'd got an audition. I only heard the word Tomorrow because I started screaming. I knew right away it was for "Tomorrow, When The War Began". It was a story I had grown up with throughout childhood and a book series that I had always been in love with. I was very nervous at first when I read the script." The chance to become a part of 'TWTWB' cinematic incarnation was enough to bring twenty year old actor and martial artist Chris Pang back to Australia from his new home in Hong Kong. "I studied "Tomorrow, When The War Began" at school and have always thought John Marsden was a brilliant writer. One of my favourite themes in the book is the idea of the characters having freedom from their parents, something most teenagers want, and how the characters then deal with that freedom." Andrew Ryan (TV'S "The Jesters"), had a novel approach to securing the role of loner Chris Lang. He turned up at the audition in character. "It was the first time I did an audition in character because I was tired of not getting any roles." How does he describe his character? "Chris is a bit of a dude. He likes some bad things, some illegal things: he's a bit naughty." For debut director Beattie, working with the eight actors who comprise the films main cast was a highly rewarding experience. "The cast surprised me everyday with their choices and ideas. I welcomed their input and I loved seeing them get so involved in their characters. I have really demanded a lot of them and all of them have performed well above what I had ever dared hope so I am endlessly proud of my actors." What It's All About

Seven aussie teenagers from a small country town called Wirrawee: Ellie, Corrie, Homer, Kevin, Lee, Robyn and Fiona; decide to pack a Landrover and go bush for the weekend. At roads end, they don their backpacks and venture into an isolated, wild and little visited, cliff encircled gorge called "Hell". The setting is idyllic and it's not long before they're all flirting with members of the opposite sex, mucking about, and enjoying themselves. Later that night, some are woken by the sound of a fleet of planes flying overhead. When they finally make the return trip to civilisation they discover a Hell of a different kind. Houses and streets are empty; the power is out; their parents are missing and everything is too quiet. An unknown force has come to Wirrawee. It’s time for Ellie and her friends to see what they’re made of, by fighting for their lives, their families, their community and their country.

The Verdict "In an era where many complain that teenages aren't articulate and lack many social skills, it would be hypoctritical to expect (in a film in which a bunch of country teenagers attempt to take on a well armed, high disciplined invading force) that the characters potrayed by the eight young cast members in "Tomorrow When The War Began" should come across as having skills that would render them unrealistic. Coming across as everyday teenagers will give younger fans of author John Marsden's "Tomorrow Series", characters they will instantly connect with. Adults will: on the other hand; find it refreshing that the main players, led by Caitlin Stasey as Ellie, don't come over as too polished. The pressure placed on everyone associated with this project would have been immense. There is a lot riding on this film. First point to make is that this is an Australian production. Sadly the reputation of locally made films has taken a nose-dive. Just mention the words "it's an Australian film", and peoples eyes roll back in their sockets as they start shaking their heads. It's the 'kiss of death' to mention its a home grown product. And there haven't been any big money-makers lately at the box-office. The industry is reeling at the moment. Which brings me to my second point. Which is? That there is a 'bigger' picture when it comes to "Tomorrow When The War Began". Success will mean a sequel and the chance to establish an international franchise. After all, "Tomorrow When The War Began" is only one book in the "Tomorrow Series". With the exception of the soundtrack, I think, the production team have done more than enough to get this film across the line. It's a rewarding experience on so many levels. The cast, the setting (stunning scenes in the Blue Mountains), the action, suspense and SFX are all winners. One thing I am certain of is this: the cast will gel together even more so in a sequel. A very satisfying start. 3 1/2 STARS." Who's Who?

Caitlin Stasey Rachel Hurd-Wood Lincoln Lewis Deniz Akdeniz Phoebe Tonkin Chris Pang Ashleigh Cummings Andrew Ryan Colin Friels Pek Ang Matthew Dale Andrew Liam Pringle Andy Minh Trieu Masa Yamaguchi Julia Yon

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Ellie Linton Corrie Mackenzie Kevin Holmes Homer Yannos Fiona Maxwell Lee Takkam Robyn Mathers Chris Dr Clements Mr Takkam Mr Coles Nolan Baumson Tanker soldier Sergeant Mrs Takkam

The Crew Directed by Stuart Beattie From the novel "Tomorrow When The War Began" by John Marsden Screenplay by Stuart Beattie Produced by Michael Boughen & Andrew Mason Original Music by Reinhold Heil & Johnny Klimek Cinematography by Ben Nott Film Editing by Marcus D'Arcy Casting by Anousha Zarkesh Production Design by Robert Webb Art Direction by Damien Drew supervising art director Michelle McGahey Set Decoration by Beverley Dunn Costume Design by Terry Ryan Run Time 104 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2010 - Paramount Pictures - All Rights Reserved ©1999-2010 The Movie Pages & impact Internet Services. All Rights Reserved. Protected by Australian and International Copyright. Trademark Laws and Intellectual Property Rights apply.