The old Neighbours studio in Melbourne has a new resident, and Skeletons is far scarier than anyone on Ramsay Street.
The Brie Larson horror film is in the final stretch of production in Nunawading, becoming the first shoot to take over the reactivated eastern-suburbs facility since the soap called it a day. Skeletons has rolled cameras across the Yarra Valley, Dandenong Ranges, Mornington Peninsula and Werribee, with support from VicScreen and a federal filming incentive.
The production has created around 635 jobs and tipped more than $21.5 million into the state economy. Roughly 300 local businesses have been pulled into the effort too, spanning caterers, transport operators, accommodation providers, medical services and specialist screen suppliers.
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
From soap sets to a creature feature
Neighbours filmed at the Nunawading site for four decades before wrapping in 2025, a suburban Melbourne soap that grew into a genuine global export with a huge following in the UK. Seeing a big-budget genre production move into the same walls makes for a tidy second act, and it hands the eastern suburbs a rare slice of screen action, a fair way from the usual gravitational pull of Docklands Studios.
Skeletons comes from producer J.J. Abrams and director JT Mollner, whose previous feature Strange Darling built a devoted cult following on the back of its jagged, non-linear storytelling. The new film tracks a young boy who slowly works out that his parents are hiding a deeply unsettling secret about his mother’s true nature. It’s a creature feature told from a kid’s-eye view.
The screenplay came from Brian Duffield, based on a short story by Philip Fracassi, with revisions from Mollner. Sony Pictures snapped up worldwide rights in a competitive bidding war at this year’s European Film Market, so there was serious international heat on the project long before cameras rolled here.
Post-production sticks around
Rather than shipping the footage offshore, the visual effects and post work will stay in the state. The project is establishing Chroma Film Lab, a new film development laboratory in Brunswick East, keeping a solid share of the skilled, behind-the-scenes labour local. For a pocket of Melbourne’s inner north better known for warehouses and cafes, a working film lab is a new addition to the map.
The cast is loaded. Alongside Larson are John Goodman, Kyle Gallner, Willa Fitzgerald, Ione Skye, Keith Carradine and Daithí Ó hAragáin. Victorian producers Paul Currie and Mario Biancacci, whose credits take in Better Man, Ricky Stanicky and I Play Rocky, are also on the team.
Sony has locked a cinema release for 4 June 2027, which means the Nunawading shoot feeds straight into a major studio horror slate. First-look footage tends to surface a fair while out, so Melburnians hunting for familiar backdrops on the big screen will have to sit tight.
The shoot drew on the federal Location Offset alongside VicScreen’s incentives, a combination built to make Victoria a cheaper, easier proposition for offshore studios weighing up where to spend. Reel in a production the size of Skeletons and the flow-on runs well past the set, into hotels, hire companies and freelance crews across the city.
It also adds to a solid run for the state’s screen sector, landing next to recent local productions such as Fog City, Written in the Stars and the series Wentworth: Halfway Home. For a place that spent years watching work drift interstate, that’s a healthy tally, and reviving a dormant studio to do it is a neat trick.
For more information, head here.
