The most epic Australian battle is finally getting its time to shine on the big screen, but there’s just one detail about The Emu War that is factual.

The film, which is coming to select cinemas on June 21, is based on the infamous and very real “emu war”, which sought to reduce the population of emus in Western Australia in 1932.

Jay Morrissey, who is the film’s writer, producer, co-director and editor, told TND the emu war was simply a “good starting point” to build on when making a parody of a war film.

Movies like Saving Private Ryan, Hacksaw Ridge and War Horse are all adored by Morrissey and his co-writers, because they are so sentimental they “verge on being almost funny”.

Australians certainly have an affinity for war stories, especially when they are being told on screen.

Morrissey admits it is hard to know if Australians are going to respond well to The Emu War.

“I guess all you can do with comedy, I think, is write stuff that you think is funny,” he said, adding the film’s comedic flair is thanks to a collaborative effort from all involved.

The Emu War was several years in the making. The proof of concept film was shot in 2018 and it has been a passion and obsession for those involved ever since.

By the time filming wrapped, the cast and crew were like family, said Lisa Fineberg, who produced and co-directed the movie.

“The cast and crew put in so much to make it happen and it’s just really exciting to finally be able to show it to people,” Morrissey said.

It’s not a doco

Fineberg admits the movie is “incredibly inaccurate”.

“It’s just creative licence. It’s the concept of it and then we’ve just gone off in all sorts of directions,” she said.

“If people are looking for a doco, then this is not the film for them.”

Morrissey joked that moviegoers will likely walk out of the cinema “dumber than when they walked in, but The Emu War does get one thing right: Major Meredith.

Major Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith  did lead the Australian Army into war against the emus in 1932 and in the film he is portrayed by Damian Callinan.

The film also didn’t use CGI for the emus, instead, puppets and puppeteers brought them to life.

Puppets were used to bring the emus to life. Photo: Hot Dad Productions

“I think part of us thought that if we use puppets, that will be cheaper than visual effects, which we later learned is not the case,” Fineberg said.

“Puppets require puppeteers, and also a lot of rotoscoping, which is really time consuming, so by the time you’re done, it would have been probably easier to just have CGI.”

However, despite it being costly and time-consuming, she believes the overall “vibe” is much better with the puppets and Morrissey said the film’s budget would have never allowed for super expensive CGI anyway.

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What happened in the real emu war?

It sounds like one of those things an Australian would make up and tell people overseas, but the army really did go to war with flightless birds.

The military operation came about to deal with emus damaging crops in WA.

The Royal Australian Artillery assigned three of its own to cull 20,000 emus with machine guns, at the request of local farmers.

In two months, they only killed less than 1000 emus.

Major Meredith said emus “face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks”, according to Brittanica.

Although arguably funny that the government waged a war against birds, there were people at the time who thought the treatment was inhumane.

Eventually, the emus were declared the victors of the war, but two years later the government gave farmers ammunition to cull them.