Animal Kingdom adaptation moves to US cable TNT

The US series adaptation of David Michod’s 2010 Aussie feature Animal Kingdom has moved from Showtime to TNT.

The project has been under development from John Wells (Shameless, Mildred Pierce, Southland) and Jonathan Lisco (Southland, K-Ville, The District) in association with Warner Horizon Television since 2011, originally with Showtime.

A pilot will begin in LA next month featuring Ellen Barkin (Sea of Love) and Scott Speedman (The Strangers).

The US version centres on 17-year-old Joshua “J” Cody who moves in with his wild, freewheeling relatives — grandmother (Barkin) and uncles — in their Southern California beach town when his mother ODs. He is pulled into their life of indulgence and excess and soon discovers that it’s all being funded by criminal activities.

Barkin plays the role which re-ignited Jacki Weaver’s career, her depicted as Janine “Smurf ” Cody, a working-class mother with what appears to be a picket-fence lifestyle who is actually the boot-tough matriarch of an organised crime family and has enough authority to make even the most dangerous men tremble in her presence.

Speedman plays Cody’s son and Josh’s uncle Barry “Baz” Brown. Adopted by the Cody family when he was 12, Baz now leads the group in their armed robberies, but he also thinks of breaking away from a life of crime.

Source: Deadline