Jai Courtney plays a lovesick hunter who catches a fox, and the fox talks him into a very bad idea. That is the hook of The Fox, the Australian black comedy whose trailer is out ahead of a November 26 cinema release in Australia. The fox is voiced by Olivia Colman, and Sam Neill lends his voice to a magpie.
Courtney’s character, Nick, is the easygoing heir to a rich rural landowner. He learns that his fiancée, Kori, played by Emily Browning, has been cheating. Out hunting one night he traps the fox, which bargains for its life: let it go, and it will show him how to turn Kori into the perfect partner. In the distributor’s own words, the film follows “an affable yet hapless bloke who encounters a talking Fox offering him the chance to transform his fiancée into the perfect woman.”
The trailer leans into the deadpan tone. The fix the fox offers involves a magic hole in the ground, and the Kori who climbs back out seems ideal at first, until her odd new habits start to unsettle Nick.
Who made The Fox
The film is the first feature from Adelaide filmmaker Dario Russo, who wrote, directed, edited and scored it himself. Russo built a cult following online two decades ago with the parody series Italian Spiderman and later co-created the spy spoof Danger 5.
It comes from Causeway Films, the South Australian company behind The Babadook and Talk to Me, and it is the studio’s first comedy. Producers Kristina Ceyton and Samantha Jennings are joined by Carly Maple. “I hope audiences will enjoy the ride (and also learn to be more careful when trusting foxes),” Russo said when the first teaser arrived in May.
The rest of the cast includes Damon Herriman, Claudia Doumit, Zlatko Burić, Miranda Otto, Frankie J. Holden, Heather Mitchell and Kim Gyngell.
A long road to theaters
The film has been on the festival circuit for more than a year. Here is how it got to this point:
- October 19, 2025: World premiere at the Adelaide Film Festival.
- March 2026: International premiere at SXSW in Austin, Texas.
- June 2026: Screens at the Sydney Film Festival and wins the audience award for best Australian feature.
- October 2026: Plays the Panorama section of the Sitges festival in Spain.
- November 26, 2026: Australian release through Madman Entertainment, moved back from an earlier October 29 date.
- December 4, 2026: US release through Aura Entertainment.
Early critics have been mostly kind. On review aggregators, 91% of the first eleven reviews counted were positive, though a separate weighted score sits at a middling 60 out of 100 from five critics, so the reception is warm rather than unanimous.
Why the cast stands out
For a low-key Australian comedy, the voice cast is unusually starry. Colman, an Oscar winner for The Favourite, has had a busy fall in strange fables; she also appears in Wicker, in which Alexander Skarsgård plays a husband made of woven wicker. Neill, best known worldwide for Jurassic Park, plays a foul-mouthed bird. For more on new releases, browse our Entertainment section.
US audiences get their turn on December 4, just over a week after the film opens in Australia.
Further reading
Illustrative image. Image: Shylu007, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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