Greg McLean (filmmaker)

Did You Know?

• McLean was raised on a farm in Emu Creek on the outskirts of Bendigo, Victoria.
• He attended Eppalock Primary School and Catherine McAuley College.
• He initially studied painting at university before completing a graduate diploma in directing at NIDA.

Career

Greg McLean started out working with theatre director Neil Armfield and with Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin at Opera Australia. His debut short film, Plead, earned a Gold award from the Australian Cinematographers Society, while his short ICQ took the Best Director prize at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival. Through his company GMF, he also made TV commercials. McLean’s feature debut was the 2005 Australian indie horror Wolf Creek, which drew mixed reviews but gained a cult following; in the US it was originally rated NC-17 before being cut down to an R. He followed that with 2007’s Rogue, about a giant saltwater crocodile menacing tourists in the Northern Territory.

McLean was considered to direct Paranormal Activity 2 and produced Justin Dix’s thriller Crawlspace. In February 2013, he returned as co-writer, producer, and director for Wolf Creek 2, with John Jarratt again playing serial killer Mick Taylor. After that, McLean founded Emu Creek Pictures and wrote, directed, and produced the thrillers The Darkness, The Belko Experiment, and Jungle. He executive produced and directed episodes of the Wolf Creek TV series, along with The Gloaming, Bloom, Jack Irish, La Brea, The Twelve, and Scrublands.

In 2024, he served as series director for the Netflix show Territory. More recently, McLean teamed up with fellow Australian director Patrick Hughes and screenwriter James Beaufort to launch the production company Huge Film, whose first project is the action/sci-fi feature War Machine, which McLean produced.