Why Fox has an epic problem

In fact, the studio is so bullish that it sees "Australia" emulating the box-office performance of the equally adult-oriented "The Bucket List," which opened modestly last Christmas but ended up grossing $93 million in the U.S. alone. My guess is that "Australia" will find it tougher sledding over the holidays, up against plenty of other adult-oriented films. Still, I'm glad Fox made the movie. I've long argued that Fox should be a more filmmaker-friendly studio, and whatever you say about "Australia," it is surely a filmmaker's movie.

But without any bankable stars in the picture ("Australia" once again proving that Kidman is many things but not a movie star), Fox has been forced to sell it as a Baz Luhrmann film. And as all of us Baz fans know well, Luhrmann is many things, most notably a brilliant artist, but he is not a popcorn-chewing, crowd-pleasing filmmaker. He is, irony of all ironies, the poster boy for the rationale behind Fox Searchlight, Fox's specialty division, which keeps a tight lid on expenses so it can make money selling daring films to specialized audiences.

But the postmodern sensibility that makes "Australia" such a rousing but strangely self-conscious epic is a sensibility that really only fits the Searchlight economic model. Expect to see Fox double down on its marketing efforts to give the movie a big boost, gambling that the film could do considerably better overseas, but you have to wonder if "Australia" will be the kind of movie the rest of the world will wholeheartedly embrace.

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patrick.goldstein @latimes.com