“That was something that really was a key concept of ours when we were looking at live-action movies for reference.” That idea of these tiny little animals in a vast environment,” Knight said. “Also ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ was a big one. (We saw about 30 minutes of footage but it ended before they actually reached the outback.) Cripps and Knight also cited more offbeat choices for inspiration, as well, including “Strictly Ballroom” and “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.”Īnd there was at least there one key touchstone that was of the non-Australian variety.
There were some additional sea life that he wanted to see in the film, like the blue ringed octopus and the blue bottle jellyfish, “which every Australian kid has been stung with.”Īs the new trailer suggests, “Back to the Outback” will be full of homages to some of the best, most memorable Australian cinema, including all of the “Mad Max” films. But the dingoes didn’t make the cut,” Cripps added. “There’s just too many animals in Australia that can harm you to put in the film. “Unfortunately, we did have dingoes in there.” Well, not anymore. When asked if there was any outback creature too creepy to make cute, Knight did say there was one. Frank, the spider, for instance, is “an awkward teenager ” Zoe, the thorny devil, was “goth” with her spikes. “We worked very hard with the actual cool images of them, but to make them appealing and certain qualities of the animals are used in the characters themselves,” Knight said. He said that focusing on the animals that inhabited the Danger House – a scorpion, thorny devil (what those growing up in Texas, like, myself, would call a “horny toad”), poisonous snake and spider, who break out of the zoo alongside an objectively adorable koala called Pretty Boy – was “a lot of fun.” (Cripps, who is Australian, said that he once had a huntsman spider crawl into his mouth.) “’Larrikins’ had focused on the cute animals, and so I didn’t want to go back down that same road,” Cripps told TheWrap. “Larrikins,” like “Back to the Outback,” centered on Australian creatures – but Cripps notes the key difference.
In fact, Cripps worked on the failed “Larrikins” project, one of a handful of promising-sounding DreamWorks Animation projects that were canceled amidst financial concerns (among them: the troubled “Me and My Shadow” and “Goofy Movie” director Kevin Lima’s “Monkeys of Mumbai”). The impressive voice cast includes Isla Fisher, Eric Bana, Guy Pearce, Keith Urban, Rachel House and Jacki Weaver, with directors Clare Knight and Harry Cripps both making their directorial debut after working for years at DreamWorks Animation (Cripps as a writer and Knight as an editor). 10, was announced less than a year ago and now it is ready to hit the streaming service, along with the gang of cuddly creatures who escape from their zoological habitat and, as the title suggests, head back to the outback. The Netflix original animated film, set for release on Dec. “Back to the Outback” is ready to strike.