Exclusive: Greg McLean on Jungle, the future of Wolf Creek

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Director Greg McLean (WOLF CREEK, THE DARKNESS) is a busy man, but our very own JimmyO managed to snag a second of his time to sit down and talk about some of his upcoming projects. The first topic of conversation was the future of the WOLF CREEK franchise, which recently was reincarnated into a mini-series also starring the inimitable John Jarratt as Mick Taylor.

Are you looking at going into WOLF CREEK 3 soon and will it tie in with the series?

The series will probably be the first. You know, we’ll do another Wolf Creek series and then the movie will be probably later after that.

What can we expect with Wolf Creek season two?

It’s still under wraps, and I can’t say too much about it. You can expect much more Mick and you can expect a much bigger body count. It takes the set up of the first season and spins it on its head again.

High body counts will always get me in the door, I can tell you that. It will be interesting to see how they manage both a film franchise and a TV series more or less concurrently, because I don't think a multimedia experiment of this scale has ever really happened in the horror genre.

They also went on to talk a bit about McLean's upcoming survival flick JUNGLE:

What can you share when it comes to the upcoming JUNGLE?

It’s based on a book, so it’s an autobiography about a guy that the situation really happened to. In 1981, an Israeli backpacker named Yossi Ghinsberg was backpacking in Bolivia in South America. He met up with two friends, an American and a Swiss guy who are traveling together. They met a German guide who is a jungle guide, and he offered them a three week trip into the jungle to go on the trip of a lifetime, and go see tribes and pan for gold and all that kind of stuff. And the story that happened is one of those incredible kind of survival tales. It all went totally wrong. And basically Yossi (Daniel Radcliffe) survived in the jungle for twenty days by himself with nothing. So it’s an incredible survival story, and incredibly emotional and spiritual because of what he goes through, what he loses and what he discovers. It’s an amazing story. And Daniel’s performance is extraordinary.

You are drifting a little away from horror with this.

It’s really just a true life story. Just a true life, amazing, inspiring story. It has some thriller elements to it because of the question of is he or isn’t he going to survive, so it’s not really scary. It’s a telling of an extraordinary event.

JUNGLE also stars Thomas Kretschmann, Alex Russell, Joel Jackson, and Yasmin Kassim. It will arrive in 2017.