The project had been around for a number of years since David Puttnam suggested Bob Ellis turn his upbringing into a film and hired him to write it in 1979.

[3]It was originally announced that it would be made in the early 1980s with Paul Cox as director, Patric Juillet and Jane Ballantyne as producer, and Robert Menzies and Sarah Walker in the lead roles.

"He was much less the sort of soft wimp that I'd assumed, and it was one of the happiest experiences I've ever had, working with him and those wonderful young actors," says Ellis.

[3] According to Ozmovies: The Nostradamus Kid opened to decidedly mixed reviews, with some appreciating the film’s idiosyncratic, eccentric tone - befitting a priapic Seventh-day Adventist fearing the apocalypse - and others finding it a tedious bore with more than dubiously suspect sexual politics.

It was dogged at every turn by The Piano (1993), which I both detest and resent because it is a conscienceless piece of American betrayal of a story that wasn't very good in the first place.