Little Fish hopes for big splash at the box office

closeup Jason Gagliardi

'No,' says Robert Mullis through gritted teeth, for what isn't the first and certainly won't be the last time. 'The film is not a sequel to Big Fish.' The Bangkok investment banker and nascent movie mogul has just finished screening a sneak preview from the first film backed by Mullis Capital (Independent), the film financing arm of his investment bank Mullis Capital. The film is called Little Fish.

There's nothing little about the cast or budget, however: it has a respectable HK$52 million behind it, Australian director Rowan Woods at the helm and an all-star antipodean cast featuring Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Sam Neill and Martin Henderson.

'Let me state once and for all that it has nothing to do with Big Fish,' says Mullis of that other film, which stars Tim Burton Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney and Billy Crudup. 'Little Fish is a drama, it's right on the borderline of art house, it's an anti-drug story [set in and around Sydney's Vietnamese ganglands, Cabramatta], a love triangle, and it's very emotional. The first time I saw it, I had a good weep.'

It also has Hugo Weaving looking very un-Matrix like in what might be the world's ugliest mullet. 'I've never seen such chemistry between a group of actors,' Mullis says. 'Cate and Hugo are really quite outstanding. This was a film they were keen to do, and that passion really comes through in the finished product.'

As Little Fish gets set for its July 20 world premiere at the Melbourne Film Festival, Mullis is back in the spotlight in Thailand, announcing plans for the second film his company will fund: a US$15 million epic called Round Five, to be made in Thailand with Barrie Osborne - the Hollywood film executive who produced The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and Face Off - on board as producer, and Thailand's Wych Kaosayananda (Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever) slated to direct.