Don Groves is a Deadline contributor based in Sydney.

EXCLUSIVE: While two Australian producers are developing biopics of INXS and the band’s late frontman Michael Hutchence, a TV miniseries may just steal their thunder. The Seven Network has commissioned Shine Australia to produce Never Tear Us Apart: The INXS Story, a four-hour saga. The project hasn’t been formally announced but Deadline has learned shooting is due to start in Melbourne in mid-2013 and the producers have started searching for actors in their late teens or early 20s to play Hutchence (who died in a Sydney hotel room in 1997), and fellow band members, brothers Jon, Tim and Andrew Farriss, Kirk Pengilly and Gary Beers, plus their manager Chris Murphy. The miniseries may be finished and ready to air before either of the films is in the can. Producers Trevor Ray Field and Suzy Markovski and screenwriter/executive producer Robert Lewis Galinsky are prepping Two Worlds Colliding, based on the book Just A Man – The Real Michael Hutchence by the singer’s sister Tina and his mother, Patricia Glassop. Meanwhile Screen Australia is funding the development of Michael with producer Sue Murray and writer- director Richard Lowenstein, based on the latter’s work with Hutchence and the band and interviews with his siblings.