Vinnie Jones to bring Batavia shipwreck drama to life

FORMER soccer star Vinnie Jones has been cast as the lead actor in a thriller about one of WA's great untold stories - the wreck of the Batavia.

Melbourne filmmaker David Blake, fresh from his first feature film, Lost and Found, heard the story of the Batavia and the Abrolhos Islands three years ago and within 24 hours had written a synopsis for Batavia's Temper: Blood Fury.

The $3 million film, which starts shooting in May on and around the Abrolhos Islands and Geraldton, has a contemporary setting with links to the massacre.

"After the experience of making my first film, I knew I wasn't going to get funding to make a film just about a 1629 shipwreck, so I realised it had to have a present-day take on the murders," Blake said.

"But I still needed a hook, a link to the Batavia and the murders, and I found that on my second trip up here when I read about the predikant or preacher's family, the Bastiaensz family.

"One of Cornelisz's men had fallen for the predikant's daughter and they were invited to dinner in Cornelisz's tent. While they were there seven of the other mutineers made their way to the Bastiaensz's tent and murdered the predikant's wife and their six other children, including a five-year-old boy."

Jump to today and a distant descendant of the family has decided to exact revenge on a relative of the murderers.

"A body is discovered hanging on Beacon Island in the Abrolhos and in comes Detective Inspector Cashlin Rose, a Brit working with the WA police. He's the guy they bring in on the weird cases. He's got a certain sensibility and he's got some education that the normal run-of-the-mill policeman doesn't have," Blake said.

"I knew from a marketing point of view I needed an international name if I was to have any possibility of any success outside of Australia's shores, and Vinnie Jones was suggested quite early on."

Jones was famous in Britain before he switched to acting - he played football for Wales and was sent off 12 times in an eventful English Premier League career with Wimbledon, Chelsea and Sheffield United.

He made his film debut in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in 1998 before appearing in Snatch and Swordfish.

"He has a certain physicality that suits the Cashlin Rose character. I had an opportunity to meet up with Vinnie in New York and talk through the script with him and I like the fact we both came to some conclusions pretty much at the same time about how the character would dress and how we would play him quiet and reserved," Blake said.

WA's remote and somewhat desolate Abrolhos Islands would feature strongly and "become characters in their own right".