The Kings of Mykonos: Wogs always strike twice

When you have an $11.4m comedy in your hands, a sequel is a no-brainer, even if it takes 10 years to make it happen. Miguel Gonzalez met with the creators of The Kings of Mykonos and discussed why ‘ethnic’ content is the secret to domestic and international success.
Five years ago actor/writer/producer Nick Giannopoulos started developing a story about a couple of Australians with a Mediterranean background going back to their ancestral homeland for the first time, only to discover that it is no longer the same place their parents left, and that they are, in fact, more Australian than they ever thought they were.
“It’s an Australian fish-out-of-the-water comedy, shot in Greece yet uniquely Australian. That’s why Crocodile Dundee worked; these are western suburbs Melbourne boys plonked into the middle of one of the most cosmopolitan islands in the world, with their thongs and broad Australian accents,” he told Encore.
He insists he never set out to do a sequel, but after a while he realised that the characters from his 2000 hit The Wog Boy would work well as the leads of this new story, and that would create a stronger marketing push for the film.
But the artwork has focused on The Kings of Mykonos rather than on the connection with The Wog Boy because even though it’s capitalising on the success of its predecessor, Giannopoulos wants people to see it as a stand-alone film. Internationally, it will be known simply as The Kings of Mykonos, because the ‘Wog brand’ is not recognisable overseas. The first film was mostly conceived for a local audience, and elements like the title didn’t travel well internationally.
“We achieved some good sales, but while it could have done a little bit better, the response here made up for it.,” said Giannopoulos.
The film built an audience in Greece over the years, and this year it screened on free-to-air television on the country’s biggest ratings night, Easter Sunday.
According to Giannopoulos, this is because the Greeks are becoming more accepting of the descendents of their diaspora, a phenomenon that is still very recent.
“They’re starting to realise that we have a lot to offer,” argued Giannopoulos.
It is that awareness that made the Greek Film Centre (the Greek equivalent of Screen Australia) invest money on the film. The GFC provides up to €80,000 as a subsidy to films that are partially spoken in Greek, as well as partially shot in the country, with Greek actors and technicians. The Kings of Mykonos fulfilled both requirements, and the inclusion of local star Zeta Makrypoulia as Steve’s love interest also guaranteed a pre-sale to Greek distributor Odeon S.A., which will release the film on June 3.
HIGHER AMBITIONS
The 2000s saw ‘ethnic’ hits such as My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Bend It Like Beckham, so the stakes were higher – but so were the potential benefits.
The project was much more ambitious than Giannopoulos’ previous film efforts, so he needed a producer with international experience. Someone recommended he talked to Emile Sherman, and it
didn’t take long for Giannopoulos to decide he’d found the right partner.

They share the producer credit but early on, Giannopoulos and Sherman decided to work to their own individual strengths and divided their responsibilities, with the former taking care of the creative elements, and the latter dealing mostly with the financing and the execution of the project.
The film is produced by Giannopoulos and his company G.O. Films and Sherman’s See-Saw Films. It was financed by Screen Australia, Film Victoria, the Greek Film Centre, Greek distributor Odeon S.A.,
and private investment. The finance was raised at the height of the global financial crisis and, according to Giannopoulos, films like his have suffered with the disappearance of the 10BA system.
“The Producer Offset is still developing, but not having the 10BA cost me some investor money. My investors had become used to its tax advantages, they understood it and it was an easy sell; the Offset
is more complicated. The 10BA would have probably cost Screen Australia less money and I could have raised more private money,” said Giannopoulos.

PUSHING THE DRAMA
In The Kings of Mykonos Steve Karamitsis must go to Greece to reclaim a family inheritance, a €3m beach in the island of Mykonos. His best mate Frank comes along, but his seduction powers seem to be fading. Both will have the chance to find love and defeat Steve’s ambitious cousin (played by Alex Dimitriades).
The script is once again written by Giannopoulos and Chris Anastassiades, with many familiar faces returning to the screen, including Vince Colosimo as Frank and Costas Kilias as Tony the Yugoslav.
But behind the camera, Giannopoulos wanted to start with a fresh slate, and there’s a different director with completely different objectives, Peter Andrikidis.

One of Australia’s most celebrated TV drama directors, his recent hits include the first Underbelly, East West 101, the telemovie False Witness and the upcoming series Killing Time for TV1. At first glance, The Kings of Mykonos would not seem like the most obvious material for his feature film debut, but Andrikidis says comedy has always been a passion of his – it’s easy to forget that his career includes the ABC’s series Grass Roots in 2000-2002, and even some episodes of Acropolis Now in the early 90’s.
When he was approached by Giannopoulos to direct The Kings of Mykonos, Andrikidis stated his conditions: he would push him and co-star Colosimo on a dramatic level, make the film ‘more real’ than
its predecessor, and extract the humour from the characters rather than relying on jokes.
The Wog Boy was not particularly well received by critics, and as successful as it was, many looked down at its artistic merits. Andrikidis admits that many of his peers could not believe it when he told them he’d signed up to do The Kings of Mykonos.
“We should be able to tell-hard hitting stories but we should be doing comedies as well, and not get locked in those dramatic endings where everybody dies. Commercial success is great and we shouldn’t be scared of genres. Sometimes we go against the genres and that’s a bad thing,” he argued.
A number of trips during development and preproduction were necessary to work out the logistics with a local production facilitator, and complete the Greek casting process.
The Kings of Mykonos had a four-week pre-production in Melbourne followed by a three-day shoot, and then a six-week pre-production in Greece and a 26-day shoot in Mykonos. Working and spending in euros, there was no time to lose, and there were two main factors that contributed to the shoot’s speed and efficiency.
The first was that most of the crew was Australian and had experience on television, so they were fast. The other element was the use of two Genesis cameras, equipped with Panavision anamorphic lenses. Andrikidis says they could not afford to shoot on 35mm so they went digital, but the results were beyond his expectations because with a DOP “who knows what they’re doing”, it looks “exactly” like film.

“[Working with two cameras] is a big help, as long as you know what you’re doing. That’s what working for drama on TV can teach you; to choreograph scenes with two cameras and make the actors overlap, etc.
“It’s something we don’t do enough, Our feature films are pretty slow, you can only do 20-25 set ups a day, and we did 50 or 60. That means the pace is different; this sort of film needed to be ‘pacey’,” he explained.
MULTI-CULTURALISM SELLS
While the Australian industry constantly struggles identifying a film’s core audience, that is a problem that The Kings of Mykonos will certainly not face.
Even at the film’s first word-of-mouth screenings, the young and predominantly Greek audience welcomed Giannopoulos like a rock star, and had a strong, positive reaction to the film.
Australia hasn’t fully explored the potential of ‘ethnic’-centric content that gives voice to the stories and concerns of its large immigrant communities and their descendents, particularly not outside the drama genre. According to Giannopoulos, catering to these markets can get you a local audience both here and in the other country, as well as other territories.
“Australia is under-utilising its multi-culturalism. It is one of the greatest assets this country has, its unique cultural diversity which can range from Bran Nue Dae to The Kings of Mykonos. We can tell such a huge range of stories, greater than the Americans.”
ONE DISTRIBUTOR’S LOSS…
The Wog Boy was released by Twentieth Century Fox in 2000, grossing $11.4m at the box office. Although his next project The Wannabes was not so lucky for Hoyts in 2003, a sequel to The Wog Boy should have been an attractive project for Fox… but it wasn’t.

“Fox turned it down and I have no idea why,” said Giannopoulos. “I was surprised; for whatever reasons, they knocked the film back.”
One distributor’s loss is another one’s gain, and Sherman’s relationship with Richard Peyten and Andrew Mackie at Transmission Films opened the door for the Wog team to work with them and their
partners at Paramount Pictures.
Greece is the film’s only pre-sale; agent Arclight Films will do a very small presentation at this month’s Cannes Film Festival and focus their efforts on Toronto. There will be no stunts, like Giannopoulos’ attempt to create the world’s largest Greek salad at Cannes 2000.

“There’s no need. This film sells itself a lot better than the first one.”
The Kings of Mykonos: The Wog Boy 2 will be released by Paramount/Transmission on May 20.