Animal Kingdom was never an obvious candidate for the small screen.
Unlike other movies-turned-TV-shows such as Fargo and Scream, whose titles are instantly recognizable, TNT's new series (premiering Tuesday, 9 ET/PT) is based on a little-seen Australian drama. Although Jacki Weaver earned a best supporting-actress Oscar nomination for her turn as the conniving matriarch of a vicious crime family, the film managed only $1 million at the U.S. box office in 2010.
"I figured a lot of people had seen it, but as it turns out, practically no one in the States has," says executive producer Jonathan Lisco (Halt and Catch Fire). "In some ways, that gave us a canvas to go deep on it, but we also wanted to keep the DNA of the movie intact."
Animal is TNT's latest foray into edgier, male-skewing territory, as part of the network's continuing effort to revamp itself as hit procedural Rizzoli & Isles ends its seven-season run this summer. Like the movie, the show follows 17-year-old Joshua "J" Cody (Finn Cole), who moves in with his grandmother (Ellen Barkin) and uncles after his mother dies of an overdose. Transplanting the action from Melbourne to Oceanside, Calif., the story tracks J's efforts to survive in his family's depraved world of drug dealing and armed robbery, while still trying to follow his moral compass.
"His mother was a drug addict, and he had to go through life looking after her and looking after himself," Cole says. "When he comes into this family, he's persuaded to lower his defenses and to try and trust people and find where he belongs. He's lacking that sense of belonging throughout the story, and we find out that he doesn't really belong anywhere."
Co-executive producer John Wells (ER, The West Wing) first reached out to filmmaker David Michôd about adapting Animal for the small screen shortly after the movie's stateside release, but wasn't given his blessing until a couple years later. With his fellow Southland writer Lisco, Wells developed the series at Showtime, which eventually passed before it moved to TNT.
Lisco, admittedly, was skeptical signing on. "At the time, John and I had done a lot of cops-and-bad-guys stuff, so I was looking for new material to explore," he says. "Then I saw the movie and realized it wasn't just about pulling jobs or running from the cops. The real DNA of the show was this powerful and perverse mother, and the hold she had over her four sons, which dripped with this sexualized danger."
While Weaver's take on the character is more akin to a cookie-baking grandma revealed to be a bad seed, Barkin's interpretation of Janine "Smurf" Cody is an icier crime boss, whose genuine affection for her sons is seen later.
"This is a woman without boundaries — she might lean over one of her sons with a robe open," Barkin says. Despite her intrusions and borderline incestuous behavior, "she's doing the right thing and working hard."
While TV has no shortage of gritty family crime dramas, Wells believes it's these complex dynamics that set Animal apart.
"We try to do family stories, only set in a far more violent world: about sibling rivalry; about a mother who has nothing other than her children and is figuring out different ways to hold onto them," Wells says. "We think of it as being a family show on testosterone and steroids."
