Mark Joffe will direct the Nine Network telemovie on the world’s richest woman Gina Rinehart and the troubled Hancock/Rinehart dynasty.
Joffe (A Place to Call Home, Wild Boys) will start shooting at the end of this month in Sydney and Western Australia.
Love Child’s Mandy McElhinney will play Rinehart in the telepic produced by Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder’s Michael Cordell, Claudia Karvan and Paul Bennett. Karvan won't have an on-camera role.
Set primarily in 1980-2002, the plot follows the public feud between Gina and her father Lang Hancock’s second wife Rose Lacson, her struggles to rebuild the company following her father’s death, and her recent battles with her children over their multi-billion dollar inheritance.
Lang and Gina are inseparable, the perfect team, and Gina is confident she will soon inherit the family business. But their relationship is rocked by a series of tumultuous events.
What follows is an increasingly bitter public feud lasting two decades: filled with forbidden love, murder accusations, drug charges, illegitimate children, court cases and epic betrayal, all played out in the media, and all for Gina to retain control over the staggering Hancock family fortune.
Sam Neill is cast as Lang Hancock, with Peta Sergeant as Rose Lacson, Robert Coleby as Frank Rinehart and Anne Louise Lambert as Hope Hancock.
The title is Gina vs Rose: The House of Hancock, which is a bit cheeky: A year ago Foxtel announced it had signed Screentime for the advance development of The House of Hancock, a six-part drama based partly on Adele Ferguson’s biography of Rinehart. Foxtel pulled the plug after Nine announced its project, initially as a two-part miniseries.
The screenwriter is Katherine Thomson , whose credits include the Schapelle telemovie, Gillian Armstrong’s feature documentary Women He’s Undressed, Mr and Mrs Murder and Killing Time.