Double Deal

Double Deal (1983)

Someone, somewhere isn't dealing the cards straight!

Wealthy Peter Sterling and his younger wife Christine have an existence of little excitement so when a stranger comes into their lives, she is intrigued. An affair turns into much more and they are soon plotting to rob Peter of a precious gemstone.

Date of release
1983-09-15
TMDB
10.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Director
Brian Kavanagh

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: A$3.7K

Double Deal is a 1983 Australian film about a bored wife of a rich man who has an affair and becomes a thief.

Production

Brian Kavanagh originally wrote the script shortly after he made the film A City's Child in 1971. Its original title was Shazam and Kavanagh says the script was "originally planned as a companion piece" for A City's Child which dealt "with the restrictions placed on women at that time" while Shazam would "show problems facing contemporary women and how confronting social demands affected them.

In 1980 Kanavagh and producer Lynn Barker were in Cannes with a film Kavanagh produced, Maybe This Time, and they pitched a package of three films to FilmCo: Double Deal, an adaptation of Mystery of a Hansom Cab and a third script. FilmCo did not respond to the three films but liked Double Deal and arranged to raise finance.

Kavanagh said they wanted a "suave, world weary, sophisticate" to play the male lead. He was offered William Shatner before Kavanagh agreed to cast Louis Jourdan who the director said "perfectly fitted my concept of the character, and proved to be so. A real professional and a charming man." The star's fee was $60,000.

Angela Punch McGregor later said she was "amazed" to be offered the role of a model but accepted the part because she had not worked for a while.

I feared that if I didn't do it I would go down the plug hole. The role was a mistake; the film was a mistake. But I didn't know that at the time. Brian Kavanagh turned out to be one of the most sensitive directors to actors that I have ever come across, but I don't think he should write his own scripts.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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