One of Australia’s most successful male stars at the global box office, Eric Bana, is returning to cinema screens next week to reprise his role as a detective in the sequel to The Dry.

Force of Nature: The Dry 2 was scheduled to premiere in August, but Bana (who is also producer) announced the film’s premiere would be delayed until the US writers and actors strikes were over so they could “give it the release it deserves”.

Speaking to The New Daily in Melbourne this week, Bana, 55, and director Robert Connolly (The Dry, Balibo, Blueback) are thrilled to get out there and chat about their latest collaboration.

They fronted up to FM radio stations – where Bana is still asked about playing criminal Mark ‘Chopper’ Reid in Chopper, working alongside Brad Pitt in Troy and Daniel Craig in the 2005 hit Munich (where he says he helped convince Craig to take on James Bond) – and are preparing for a gala event with The Dry‘s author Jane Harper on stage at St Kilda’s Astor Theatre on February 2.

“Rob and I feel really passionate about handling our films, not just watching an ad appear, and then it’s in the cinema and you hope people will hear about it,” says Bana, who is also a long-standing member of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA).

“I don’t think for a second you can dream about getting away with that here in Australia.

“We have different viewing habits, different ways of releasing films … far different to Americans … so there was never a version where we would’ve put this film out back in August without us sitting face to face, to take it on the road, to do the Q&A screenings, hand deliver the film.

“It was a simple decision. We like to take care. To us, it would’ve felt careless,” says Bana, who returns as Detective Aaron Falk to investigate a disappearance after five women head into Victoria’s remote bushland for a three-day corporate bonding retreat.

Connolly says the pair are even heading north to Albury this weekend, which was the No.1 regional screening location for the original 2020 hit – which enjoyed box office receipts of $20 million [and is the 15th highest grossing Australian film of all time].

“It was Eric’s idea! He said, ‘why don’t we just drive up to Albury and do some Q&As and say thank you?’ … we wouldn’t have been able to do any of that.”

Eric Bana on location where the ground underneath can give way any second. Photo: Roadshow

Harper has written a third and final book in the Aaron Falk trilogy, Exiles, but Bana and Connolly want to get through this roadshow before talking about future projects.

As The Dry – adapted from Harper’s novel in 2020 – was set in the Mallee and Wimmera regions, so too the sequel is in another Victorian location.

This time filming was in the Dandenong Ranges, the Otways, the Yarra Valley and “on the other side of the Warburton River system”.

A director’s dream for Connolly, who was out there rain, hail or shine behind the camera every day filming those “big and muscular and visceral” landscapes.

“There’s the mist in the mornings which is spectacular, the late-afternoon light is incredible, so there was an aesthetic reason for it too.”

Bana was equally passionate about his project: “I hate working in a studio with lights”.

“Being on location outdoors feeds a creative energy all around the shoot. Doesn’t matter where you are. Actors and crews respond creatively to that mindset.

“I feel like a showoff to overseas – have a look at our backyard, look at these locations.”

Bana said the shoot was “very physical” amid pouring rain, steep terrain and thick forest floors.

“I love that … we had a department heads meeting very early on – and the first thing [our safety officer] said was ‘there’s pretty much nothing I can do for you out there, so look after yourselves’.

“It set the tone for the whole shoot.

“Rob is the toughest director I’ve ever worked with. He’s always putting himself through the wringer as a director, [which was] amazing,” he said.

Without giving too much away …

Leading the women on the three-day corporate hiking retreat is Jill Bailey (played by Deborra-Lee Furness) who keeps a suspicious eye on her colleague, Alice (played by Anna Torv, The Newsreader).

Joining them is fellow staffer Lauren (Robin McLeavy), Bree (Lucy Ansell) and her sister, Beth (Sisi Stringer), who has recently joined the company after a stint in rehab.

One of the five women disappears in the thick of the forest after the group begins to lose track of its surrounds, fails to navigate properly, and starts fighting with each other before finding an isolated cabin.

When they finally return to their lodgings, their flaws, suspicions and motivations emerge and none seem to be honest about what happened to their missing colleague.

It’s Alice who goes missing, and she’s a whistle-blowing informant for a case federal agents Falk and Carmen Cooper (Jacqueline McKenzie) are working on against the Bailey Tenants CEO Daniel Bailey (Richard Roxburgh) who is Jill’s husband.

“From the beginning, it was, who is going to play these roles? My wife is our casting director [Jane Norris]. She suggested Deborra-Lee, and sometimes you audition 500 people for a role, [but] we only ever considered [her].

“It was like, she will be incredible in this role.”

Adds Bana, jokingly: “I was like, damn it should have been our idea. We’ve known Deb forever.”

Five women heading into dense forest for three days, what could go wrong? Photo: Roadshow 

Uncovering what really happened on the women’s fateful hiking trip, Falk begins to think the worst of Alice’s wellbeing.

Talking to each of the women, he tries to piece together the seemingly incomplete stories of Alice’s co-workers. The rescued women recount being led astray on their second day by a tired and hungover Bree.

While attempting to find help, tempers begin to fray as they stumble further into the ranges. Lauren sustains a head injury after unsuccessfully attempting to retrieve their map that had fallen into a river, leaving them more helpless than before.

It’s not going to any corporate plan.

With a sub-narrative of a serial killer who once lived in the forest – the viewer immediately thinks back to Ivan Milat and his true-crime serial killing spree of the 1980s in New South Wales’ Belanglo State Forest – the whodunnit gets even more complicated.

“We like to assume there is a killer, an evil person who can get caught and can get locked up. In a counterpoint, with the deeper themes of the film, that we’re all complicit,” Connolly said.

“I like the complexity … and we’ve got a tradition of that in Australian cinema with the Wolf Creek films … this idea that you go out into the bush and there’s some psychopath there.

“The audience can try and work it out. We’re giving enough information to try and work out what happened. You have to have clues in there.”

Anna Torv says the audience will find out about her character’s situation ‘slowly’: ‘It ultimately unravels in the end’. Photo: Roadshow

At the Sydney premiere on January 24, Furness told reporters making the film was anything but “dry”.

“I called it The Wet the whole way through. We lived it,” she joked.

Torv, whom Bana describes as “ridiculously unbelievable” in the role of Alice, described a gruelling shoot on location where “hundreds” of leeches fell from trees and got in people’s eyes.

“People had them on their eyeballs. Every time you would turn around, they’d be stuck in their lip,’’ she told The Australian.

“It was full on … I’ve got to be honest. I think anybody who worked on the show will never forget it.’’

Force of Nature: The Dry 2 in cinemas nationally on February 8