When Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard was seen walking barefoot on the Gold Coast in Queensland recently, curiosity got the better of a local news crew.

No stranger to the filmmaking hotspot after living most of 2021 filming drama Thirteen Lives based on the 2018 Thai cave rescue, Howard was enthusiastic about another project Down Under.

“I can’t say too much about it yet. We’re still in the early stages, but it’s great to be back,” Howard said.

“We had a great experience on Thirteen Lives and I’m really looking forward to it, great people, great crew and government support.

” … you guys have locations that happen to fit the story I want to tell and it’s a fantastic reason to be here.”

That story happens to be a survival thriller, Eden, which heads into production in November and could well be based on a 1930s murder mystery that stills haunts the island of Floreana in the Galapagos Islands to this day.

Joining an A-list cast including Ana de Armas (Blonde) and Jude Law (The Talented Mr Ripley, Sherlock Holmes), is none other than one of Time‘s rising stars, Euphoria and The White Lotus actor Sydney Sweeney.

Sydney Sweeney will join the cast of A-listers in Ron Howard’s latest movie, to be filmed in Australia. Photo: Getty

“Embarking on a dream journey Down Under,” she told her 15 million Instagram followers on Tuesday.

Facing initial criticism on social media for announcing her casting amid the SAG-AFTRA strike in the US, she quickly replied there was an interim agreement in place with the union on the film.

In April Sweeney flew in to film romantic comedy, Anyone But You, with Top Gun: Maverick co-star Glen Powell [aka Hangman], Rachel Griffiths and Bryan Brown with an expected premiere the week before Christmas.

To top it off, legendary composer Hans Zimmer (The Dark Knight, Lion King and Gladiator) is joining forces once again with Howard after their 1991 collaboration on Backdraft to pen the score.

‘Unexpected, absurd, humorous, sexy’

Previously titled Origin of Species, the film is reportedly based on a true story “set around a group of eclectic characters who abandon civilisation” for a remote island in the Galapagos.

“The movie “charts the lengths humans will go in pursuit of happiness,” writes Deadline.

“Howard has wanted to tell the story for 15 years, ever since he first visited the Galapagos island [one of 13] where the real-life events took place.

“Just before the pandemic, he teamed up with writer Noah Pink (Tetris) to tell the story. Imagine [Entertainment, Howard’s US film and TV production company] began developing the script from Howard’s own story pages he’d been building on over the years.

According to the producers, the film “explores the human condition in ways that are unexpected, absurd, humorous, sexy but, above all, thrilling and deeply suspenseful”.

“They are all searching for the answer to that ever-pressing question that plagues us all: What is the meaning of life?”

Could Eden be based on the 1934 murder mystery on Floreana?

Travel websites, bloggers and documentary film makers have all been obsessed about one particular story from the 1930s.

Could this be Howard’s 15-year project?

He’s not saying, but this story would be an absolute cracker.

According to a 2013 documentary, The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, (voiced by Cate Blanchett and Diane Kruger), a Berlin doctor Friedrich Ritter and his lover and former patient Dore Strauch escape their conventional lives and settle on the other side of the world on the uninhabited Floreana Island in the early 1930s.

“Dore and Friedrich were in many ways living out their own embodiment of Adam and Eve and they were called the Adam and Eve of the Galapagos,” filmmaker Dayna Goldfine said.

“Despite the fact that they went to find utter solitude, they were discovered by the tabloids, mostly because letters they wrote home to friends and family were published. The friends and family sent them off to the papers.”

Consequently, others were attracted to the paradise  – including a self-styled Swiss Family Robinson the Wittmers,  and a gun-toting Viennese Baroness Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner-Bosquet and her two lovers.

As history records, the groups largely kept to themselves until petty fights broke out when the Baroness had grand ideas of building a hotel and parading around the small island in skimpy outfits.

On March 27, 1934, the Baroness and one of her lovers, Robert Philippson, disappeared without a trace.

Various letters and accounts claim they caught a boat to Tahiti but there were no such records of a ship arriving, nor the couple disembarking anywhere else.

“Clashing personalities are aggravated by the island community’s lusty free-love ethos, and when some of the islanders disappear, suspicions of murder hang in the air leaving an unsolved mystery which remains the subject of local lore today,” states the official documentary synopsis.

Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast, where films including Elvis, Aquaman and Pirates of the Caribbean were filmed. Photo: Village Roadshow Studios

In recent years, Queensland has prided itself on becoming a go-to state of excellence for filmmaking, with elaborate and accessible studio set-ups, vast beach and forest locations, and a wealth of crews and post-production talent eager for work.

There’s the Village Roadshow Studios and Pinnacle on the Gold Coast, with Screen Queensland Studios in Brisbane, and another in Cairns, set for completion in early 2024 to open up the tropical north.

According to federal government-backed AusFilm, which promotes Australia as a destination, Queensland has maintained a strong track record in attracting high-end productions over the past 30 years from companies such as MGM, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Group, Walt Disney Pictures, Marvel Studios and Netflix.

“Great crew members, the government is co-operative, there are good tax incentives… but more than anything, you can just get a lot of good work done,” Howardsaid.

Production for Eden will again take place in Queensland, with a small unit filming in the Galapagos.