When the original 1975 film Picnic at Hanging Rock was screened to American film distribution executives, one famously stormed out, complaining that he couldn't buy a film that didn't have an ending.
The remake, commissioned by Foxtel for broadcast in 2018, has not encountered the same cultural hurdles.
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Picnic at Hanging Rock - Trailer
A story about the disappearance of several Appleyard College students, and a teacher, from Hanging Rock.
Fremantle Media, which is producing the series for Foxtel, has inked a deal that will put the six-part drama on the US streaming platform Amazon.
The deal puts the new series in good company: among Amazon's strongest television assets are The Man in the High Castle, Mozart in the Jungle and Transparent.
The new adaptation is based on the book Picnic at Hanging Rock, by Joan Lindsay, about an outing from a girl's boarding school in rural Victoria on Valentine's Day, 1900, which ends in tragedy when some of the girls, and a teacher, vanish.
The book was turned into a 1975 film, directed by Peter Weir, which sets a powerfully high bar for any subsequent interpretation.
Weir's film, with its opening "dream within a dream" nod to Edgar Allen Poe and suffused with mystery, budding sexuality and subcutaneous horror, is considered one of the finest films of all time.
It is also one of the most perplexing because - as that American film distribution executive discovered back in 1975 - the final fate of the girls is not made clear, either in the original novel or Weir's film.
A final chapter, which was withheld from publication when the book first came out, did detail their fate, but was not published until many years later.
The new television adaptation was developed and executive produced by Fremantle's Jo Porter and Anthony Ellis and Foxtel's head of drama Penny Win.
It is written by Alice Addison; Beatrix Christian is serving as script producer.
The episodes are directed by Larysa Kondracki and Australians Michael Rymer and Amanda Brotchie.
It stars Natalie Dormer as Hester Appleyard, the headmistress of Appleyard College, and Lily Sullivan, Madeleine Madden, Samara Weaving and Ruby Rees as, respectively, Miranda, Marion, Irma and Edith, four of the girls on the ill-fated picnic.
It also stars Inez Curro as Sara Waybourne, whose devotion to Miranda is shattered when the school's most popular student does not return from the outing.
Dormer's high profile in the US, thanks to her role in Game of Thrones, would no doubt have helped Fremantle Media secure the sale.
According to the US trade publication Deadline, Amazon's acquisitions team were also swayed by a preview reel cut by Kondracki.
Kondracki's credits include The Whistleblower, Legion, The Americans and Better Call Saul.
The project also stars Lola Bessis as French mistress Mademoiselle de Poitiers, Yael Stone as deportment mistress Miss Lumley and Anna McGahan as geography and mathematics mistress Miss McCraw.
Fremantle's senior vice-president of American sales Caroline Kussner said the re-imagining would "no doubt capture contemporary audiences across the US."
The series has "fantastic scripts, outstanding cast and bold editorial direction from Larysa Kondracki," Kussner said.
Despite a bumpy start to production during which the project drew fire for hiring a non-Australian director to work on what was seen as a quintessentially Australian story, it is shaping up as one of the most anticipated television projects of 2018.
The series also stars Sibylla Budd, Don Hany, Marcus Graham, Philip Quast, Kaarin Fairfax and Kym Gyngell.
When the series was commissioned, Foxtel's head of drama Penny Win said it would "draw from the provocative spirt of the original mystery."
Fremantle's director of drama Jo Porter said it possessed "an exceptional mix and depth of established names and exciting young Australian talent who will redefine [the] characters for a new generation."
Picnic at Hanging Rock will air in Australia on Foxtel and in the US on Amazon in 2018.