Crime movie 'different beast' from Underbelly

'Animal Kingdom' is creating a huge buzz wherever it plays. Photo / Supplied

David Michod admits he had a challenge proving his first feature, Animal Kingdom, was not just "Underbelly on the big screen".

The Sydneysider is in New Zealand to promote Animal Kingdom, a powerful crime family drama set in Melbourne in the late 1980s, which will screen as part of the New Zealand Film Festival before opening commercially in New Zealand next month.

The film's release follows three seasons of the organised crime series Underbelly - highly successful in Australia and New Zealand.

"When Underbelly came out, I was quite surprised to see how well it performed and yet knew also the challenge for me would be in communicating to audiences that Animal Kingdom was a very different beast - that hopefully it was a ... rich and substantial and serious [piece of] cinema," the director said.

"Whilst it was great that Underbelly illustrated that there was an appetite for that stuff, I didn't want people to think that Animal Kingdom was just Underbelly on the big screen."

He seems to have succeeded. His movie has created a huge buzz wherever screened.

It won the World Cinema Drama Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, has grossed more than A$4 million ($4.9 million) at the Australian box office after just six weeks, has been sold to Europe and has been bought by Sony Pictures Classics for distribution in the United States.

The story focuses on a 17-year-old nephew of a family of Melbourne armed robbers who moves in with them after his mother dies of a heroin overdose. He inevitably gets pulled into their world.

"In many respects the behavioural things that are going on in Animal Kingdom are very basic," Michod said. "They're just set in a really dangerous world and it's for that reason that it doesn't surprise me at all that crime is such a mainstay of cinema and fiction generally."

Michod first began writing the screenplay in 2000, shortly after finishing film school.

The screenplay has been well regarded all the way, with Michod receiving funding and advice to develop it.

But he feels his film is better for having taken so long to be made.

"When I started writing I was in my mid-20s and my writing was naive, if not immature," he said. "When I get asked these days what advice I would give to young film-makers, it's very often that they need to be prepared for the fact that not only could it take 10 years to make your movie, but in many respects it should take 10 years.

"I'm glad I never got to make that version I had five or six years ago because it would have been a different beast and a more immature one."

- NZPA