Animal Kingdom Director Finds His Next Project: The Rover

Since directing his breakout, Academy Award-nominated film Animal Kingdom, David Michod has stayed relatively low profile. He wrote and directed a short film called Bear that starred Nash Edgerton and Teresa Palmer, but has yet to announce a feature project that he has in development or in pre-production. That changes today.

Variety reports that the Australian director will be making The Rover his next film. The story was developed by Michod and his partner Joel Edgerton, with whom he made Animal Kingdom. The story is a fairly simple one: a man goes looking for his stolen car which "contains something invaluable to him." The article doesn't mention any kind of potential casting and the film is being produced by David Linde's Lava Bear banner and Oz-based Porchlight Films. Production is aiming to start this fall in Australia.

Michod is also one of the 12 directors that are set to helm various segments of Sydney Unplugged, a collection of short films about a city in the vein of Paris, Je T'aime and New York, I Love You. Other directors attached to helm segments include Anthony LaPaglia, Toni Collette, Alex Proyas, Ivan Sen, John Curran, Kieran Darcy-Smith, Liev Schreiber, Rachel Ward, Ray Lawrence and Russell Crowe. Though Michod has had plenty of experience directing short films, Animal Kingdom served as his first feature and The Rover will be his second. Here's hoping he doesn't hit the sophomore slump and will, instead, continue stretching his talents.

Eric Eisenberg
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