Netflix’s animated comedy adventure Back to the Outback adds Isla Fisher (Now You See Me), Guy Pearce (Iron Man 3), Eric Bana (Hulk), and Keith Urban to lend their voices to the movie that will debut in fall 2021. The feature film also adds Miranda Tapsell (Top End Wedding), Angus Imrie (The Kid Who Would Be King), Rachel House (Moana), Celeste Barber (The Letdown), Aislinn Derbez (The House of Flowers), Lachlan Ross Power, Wayne Knight (Jurassic Park, Seinfeld), Tim Minchin (Robin Hood), Diesel Cash La Torraca, and Oscar-nominee Jacki Weaver (Poms).
Filmmakers Clare Knight (editor of the Kung Fu Panda Trilogy) and Harry Cripps (writer of Penguin Bloom) make their directorial debut with this film. Cripps developed the script with Weed Road Pictures’ executive producers Akiva Goldsman and Greg Lessans. Daniela Massucato will also produce.
The film is set in a reptile house, where all the reptiles are tired of being trapped inside that humans will gawk at Australia’s fearsome predators and plot a daring escape from their zoo to the Outback, a place that they can blend in without being judged for how they look.
Leading the reptile group is Maddie (Fisher), a deadly snake with a heart of gold. She is joined by the self-assured thorny devil lizard Zoe (Tapsell), a lovelorn hairy spider Frank (Pearce), and a delicate scorpion Nigel (Imrie). When their nemesis Pretty Boy (Minchin), an adorable but obnoxious koala, unexpectedly joins in on the escape, Maddie and the gang are forced to take him with them but are pursued by a zookeeper.
“I have always been touched by stories of hidden beauty. Maddie is both uniquely beauty and beast, and to get to present that message in comedy is the icing on the cake,” said Knight.