The birth of "Animal Kingdom" did not actually come from the director himself, but he did have some interest in the underground community life in Melbourne for a long time . And a friend of his, Liz Watts, who is also a director and producer, saw the potential of this script from a script project describing similar lives. She read the original script, and then suggested that David Mitchold use it as a basis for deriving the story. After that, the director wrote many drafts of the script and received feedback and suggestions from many people in the film industry.
While polishing the script, director David Mitchold got a lot of inspiration from crime novels. Among them, he was inspired by Tom Nobel, a crime novelist based in Australia. This writer used to be a reporter specializing in crimes, and his "Blue Murder" is David Mitchold's favorite.
