Robbie Hood prequel in development

EXCLUSIVE: Award-winning SBS  drama shorts Robbie Hood is getting a prequel.

Filmmaker Dylan River (The Beach, Mystery Road) tells TV Tonight he was adamant about not doing a second season with his young cast, but with the acclaim for the series he is working on a prequel.

“I’m looking for new stories but recently I’ve come to a bit of a realisation of where I can take the Robbie Hood story,” he said.

“It’ll be set in the 1980s and it’s going to be about Robbie’s mum, Robyn. So we’re just in the very early stages of development. But it’s very exciting and hopefully we’ll put that into production next year.”

The project is in development for SBS but River says he is exploring plans to expand his horizons to a much bigger scale.

“We made Robbie Hood on the smell of an oily rag,” he continues.

“Shooting in Alice Springs was an expensive exercise so we want to make sure if we’re doing it again that we have a little bit more time, a little bit more money, to push things further. We can write more crazy things knowing we can pull them off.

“But backing up something is hard! The second album always has a curse on it.”