Paula Mazur found the book Nim's Island, by Wendy Orr, in her local Santa Monica library and took it out to read to her seven-year-old son.

'What was compelling to me was that the characters were so rich and that's the beginning of a great movie for me,' she says. 'There haven't been any empowered girl characters in movies since Pippi Longstocking. The only girls my daughter sees in movies care about boys and clothes.'

Mazur has producing credits including Laurie Anderson concert film Home Of The Brave and Corrina, Corrina starring Whoopi Goldberg, but had never made a family film.

Mazur optioned the book and shopped it around, finding a home for the project at family brand Walden Media in 2004. Weeks after the deal, Walden and Twentieth Century Fox closed a co-production deal for five films including Nim's Island. Mazur had written the first draft of the script but enlisted husband-and-wife team Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett (Little Manhattan) to rewrite and direct.

A dream cast of Jodie Foster, Gerard Butler and Abigail Breslin signed on to star. That calibre, says Mazur, was essential for the film. 'For parents to enjoy a kids' movie, the characters have to be well realised and well acted,' she adds.

But weeks before shooting was about to begin, Fox dropped out as co-financier. Walden had one week to keep the project on track to meet the film's start date and stepped up to finance 100%. Fox agreed to distribute the film domestically, with Summit Entertainment handling international sales on Walden's behalf.

Mazur looked at numerous locations for the generic desert island of the film's title - Mexico, Fiji, South Africa and India among them - but settled for the Gold Coast of Australia, a country, she says, that had the right film infrastructure for the project.

Shooting started on July 31 last year, but Mazur says the production was not without its challenges, such as finding sea lions, which were finally procured from local theme park Sea World.

'We had to build swimming pools and tanks for them at the Warner Roadshow Studios, 20 minutes inland, and build rainforest and beach sets at the studio as well. We shipped in 500 or 600 trees and 90 tonnes of soil and built our house exteriors on a stage.'

The 55-day shoot ended on October 14 and a US release date was set of April 4 to capture a spring break children's audience.

Mazur is now preparing an adaptation of young-adult novel Tangerine by Edward Bloor, and is hoping Nim's Island will appeal to a broad audience and perhaps spawn further instalments.

'It's a blast making movies for a wide audience,' she says.

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