The animated comedy Back to the Outback will debut on Netflix next fall. The upcoming comedy adventure is set in Australia and features the voices of Isla Fisher, Tim Minchin, Eric Bana, Guy Pearce, and Keith Urban.
Miranda Tapsell, Angus Imrie, Rachel House, Celeste Barber, Wayne Knight, Aislinn Derbez, Diesel Cash La Torraca, and Jacki Weaver also lend their voices to animal characters.
The animated film marks the directorial debuts of Clare Knight and Harry Cripps. “I have always been touched by stories of hidden beauty,” said co-director Knight. “Maddie [the snake] is both uniquely beauty and beast, and to get to present that message in comedy is the icing on the cake.”
Co-director Cripps wrote the screenplay. “Growing up in Australia, I spent a lot of time in the Blue Mountains which has many different types of snakes and spiders, and I always preferred them to the cute cuddly animals, so it’s such a treat to make a film where the heroes are these poisonous but beautiful little creatures. This film is a love letter to Australia’s incredibly diverse and unique wildlife,” explained Cripps.
Daniela Mazzucato serves as a producer, with Weed Road Pictures’ Akiva Goldsman and Greg Lessans executive producing. Rupert Gregson-Williams wrote the music with songs by Tim Minchin (Broadway’s Matilda).
Back to the Outback Plot Description, Courtesy of Netflix:
Tired of being locked in a reptile house where humans gawk at them like they’re monsters, a ragtag group of Australia’s deadliest creatures plot a daring escape from their zoo to the Outback, a place where they’ll fit in without being judged for their scales and fangs. Leading the group is Maddie (Fisher), a poisonous snake with a heart of gold, who bands together with a self-assured Thorny Devil lizard Zoe (Tapsell), a lovelorn hairy spider Frank (Pearce), and a sensitive scorpion Nigel (Imrie). But when their nemesis — Pretty Boy (Minchin), a cute but obnoxious koala — unexpectedly joins their escape, Maddie and the gang have no choice but to take him with them.
So begins a hair-raising and hilarious road trip across Australia, as they are pursued by a zookeeper Chaz (Bana) and his adventure-seeking mini-me (La Torraca).
Back to the Outback is an animated adventure that proves just because something’s different, doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful.
