Ben Affleck is out, Isla Fisher is (almost) in. Baz Luhrmann’s 3-D adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby will look something like this: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan are a lock (as Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Daisy Buchanan—just as Lurhmann has wanted it since October 2010).

Affleck has finally committed to his next directing gig, Argo, about the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis in the Middle East, so the actor won’t be donning ‘20s tweeds as Tom Buchanan. Fisher is in negotiations to play Myrtle, Buchanan’s married lover. The Warner Bros. production will kick off in Sydney, Australia this August.

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Baz Luhrmann’s 3D take on The Great Gatsby will shoot in Sydney in August — beating out the iconic story’s home town of New York — after a deal was signed with the New South Wales (NSW) state government Friday, it was announced here Sunday.

The film is the first live-action 3D movie to be shot in NSW. Filming will take place at Sydney’s Fox Studios, with Warner Bros. backing the feature and Luhrmann’s Bazmark Films producing.

Leonardo DiCaprio will star as Jay Gatsby while Carey Mulligan has been offered the role of Daisy Buchanan.

Murmurs about a Sydney shoot have been swirling around the industry here for several weeks. Luhrmann’s last two features, Australia and Moulin Rouge were both shot at Fox Studios.

NSW Premier Kristina Kenneally said the film will inject AUS$120 million ($118 million) into the NSW economy, with the shoot to last 17 weeks and another 30 weeks to be spent on post production.

An estimated 275 crew will be employed during pre-production; more than 400 cast and crew will be employed during principal photography; and an estimated 150 post production and visual effects crew will also be employed.

Pre-production starts next month.

No details of the level of incentives provided to the film were immediately available but its a boost to the local industry with no big budget offshore features slated to shoot in Australia.

“This comes at a good time for the film industry,” Keneally said. “Australia was thought to be losing international filmmaking due to the strong Aussie dollar – put simply, this is a big win.”

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For months we’ve heard that Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrman has been workshopping an adaptation the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire. Then there was a hotly contested casting search for the role of Daisy, with the role eventually going to Carey Mulligan. Finally, Luhrman mentioned he might shoot the film in 3D.

Now Luhrman, who has only directed four films since 1992, isn’t even sure he’s going to make the film. A final decision will be made by the end of the week.

Vulture caught up with the director at the Director’s Guild of America awards and asked him about the latest on The Great Gatsby.

I gotta make a decision in three days’ time [on] whether to do it or not.

But hasn’t he been working on the film for a long time?

I think I’ve been a bit shaded out because I want everything to be perfectly positioned on it, there will be news by the end of the week.

While Luhrman is the kind of perfectionist who probably would throw away an incredible cast and screenplay, in addition to the rights which he owns, I don’t think he will. He’s probably just saying this kind of thing as a bargaining chip so he can get a better deal. I know if I was a movie studio, and I had DiCaprio, Maguire and Mulligan all ready to go, and I heard my director was being flaky, I’d pay him what he wanted in order to get the project done.

If the project does come together by the end of the week, it wouldn’t be able to start for a few months anyway as DiCaprio is getting ready to shoot J. Edgar with Clint Eastwood.

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Nothing that new with the exception of some small casting news in regards to the other main character but The Great Gatsby and Carey were mentioned in a recent interview with director Baz Luhrmann You can read the rest of the interview with Baz Luhrmann at the source.

“I’m so thrilled about Carey Mulligan [who's been cast as Daisy]. She’s just fantastic, and now one has to match Jordan. They’re a couple in a sense. They reflect two completely different sides of a coin. And so the role of Jordan has to be as thoroughly examined as Daisy, for this production, for this time,” he tells EW. “It’s like Olivier’s Hamlet was the right Hamlet for his time. Who would Hamlet be today? Same with a Jordan or a Daisy” He doesn’t yet have a short list. “I’m seeing everyone,” he says. “What’s crucial about Jordan is that she is incurably dishonest, to quote Fitzgerald. She’s dishonest on an internal level, and she has an inability for self-realization. She’s a dangerous driver, to quote Fitzgerald again. And in the simple language, I think Jordan is also what, at the time, you might have referred to as a Long Island flapper, and now you might refer to them as a Hamptons flapper. That just means not a bohemian flapper that’s living the Village, but someone who’s attaching themselves to the fashionable aspects of flapperdom…. I don’t take it lightly at all. It’s my obsession at the moment. The connectivity between buying into, in a fashion sense, this new movement — a new liberation of women, a new sensibility, a youth that was absolutely drunk on money and possibility, the first ever American youth that was completely youthful — that is a thrilling subject.”

Thanks to Emma in the comments for alerting us to a gorgeous photo of Carey auditioning for the role of Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. You can read the accompanying article right here.