Don’t Eat My Baby: Collisions, Development and Indigenous Consultation in the Australian Family Feature Film Screenplay, Dingo

his chapter investigates the challenges of script development when adapting Dingo: The Dog Who Conquered a Continent for Screen Australia’s Family Film Initiative. This funding strand was generated in response to the success of family films at the box office in comparison to the paucity (3%) of these films being submitted. The appeal of the project—a story of how the first wild dog arrived in Australia from Asia and became a companion animal to humans—required Indigenous consultation. A decision was made to apply research methodology using scientific findings (which had inspired the novel) to shape the narrative. For example, recent archaeological findings that identified the Dingo as “women’s (not man’s) best friend”. Also critical was using these sources to re-imagine (because of the notorious Chamberlain case) the identity of the dingo for a broad family audience as that of a beloved and beneficial species and to weave this into the narrative and character development