From Netflix dramas and Hollywood thrillers to giant wolves in Kuitpo Forest, here’s what to watch – and how South Australia helped bring it to the screen.
A rebellious would-be writer has had an edgy Netflix makeover, Mick Taylor is once again hunting tourists in the outback, Catherine Zeta-Jones is playing a former cocaine dealer with assassins on her tail, and Kuitpo Forest has become wartime Europe for a movie about a Soviet sniper fighting giant wolves.
Then there’s the work you might never realise has a South Australian connection at all, with Adelaide visual-effects teams helping shape major international films and series.
2026 has been another huge year for SA’s screen scene.
And all of this activity is backed by the South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC), helping productions, filmmakers and screen businesses get projects made and bring work to the state.
Here’s what you can watch now, what’s coming next and what’s still being made.
Watch now
My Brilliant Career
Streaming now on Netflix
Before it had even landed, The Guardian was calling this series a “horny, ‘bonkers’ take on an Australian classic the world is about to love”. After racking up more than 7 million views in its first two weeks on Netflix and hitting #2 in the streamer’s global Top 10, it seems the world agrees!
The story follows fiercely independent Sybylla, who’s determined to become a writer rather than live the life everyone expects of her. First published by Miles Franklin in 1901, the classic has been given an edgy, relatable makeover, complete with smutty performance poetry and a Divinyls needle drop.
Written by Liz Doran and directed by Alyssa McClelland, it was filmed across Adelaide, including at the SAFC’s Adelaide Studios in Glenside, as well as the Southern Barossa and South-East. Keep an eye out for stunning locations including Yallum Park House in Penola as “Caddagat”, the home of Sybylla’s wealthy grandmother Mrs Bossier, and Para Para Mansion in Gawler as Five Bob Downs, the residence of Sybylla’s love interest Harry.
Penny Lane Is Dead
Streaming now on Shudder and AMC+
ABC Arts summed up Mia’Kate Russell’s feature debut neatly: “Mix together Puberty Blues and Wake in Fright, then run it through a night from hell”.
This smart, blood-soaked throwback is set in 1986, and riffs on Ozploitation as three friends at a remote beach house try to survive the arrival of a bitter cousin, her drug-spiked cupcakes, dangerous boyfriend and lifetime of resentment.
Russell writes and directs, pairing the gore with a queer love story, while locals Julie Ryan and Carly Maple produce.
Treasure & Dirt
Chris Hammer’s thrilling crime novel becomes a stunning, surreal watch that The Guardian praised as “strikingly unlike your average crime drama”. A miner is found brutally murdered in an outback opal town, sending homicide detective Ivan Lucic and rural detective Nell Buchanan into a mess of secrets, greed and old sins.
The series is directed by Madeleine Gottlieb and produced by South Australian Rebecca Summerton.
The Run
Streaming now on Apple TV and Fetch
After having its world premiere at the 2025 Adelaide Film Festival and a limited cinema release earlier this year, this gripping dystopian thriller has just launched on streaming.
Written and directed by South Australian Stephen De Villiers and produced by SA’s Chloe Gardner, the film follows Mac (Callan Mulvey) an aging smuggler in a dystopian world crippled by a global fertility crisis who struggles to protect a runaway teenager and her baby from ruthless criminals while trying to complete his run for his vicious employers.
RFDS season 3
Streaming now on Seven Plus
The South Australian-made third season of the popular outback medical drama premiered on Network Seven last year as the show’s highest rated ever, reaching 4.59 million viewers.
Filmed across Adelaide and the Flinders Ranges, including at the Port Augusta RFDS base, led by SA producer Lisa Scott, the series won the 2026 Logie Award for Best Drama earlier this month.
Top End Bub
Streaming now on Prime Video and ABC iview
The TV series sequel to smash hit feature film Top End Wedding. Starring and co-created by Miranda Tapsell with SA creative Joshua Tyler, the series won an AACTA Award and was nominated for this year’s Logie for Best Scripted Comedy.
Aussie Snake Wranglers: Deadly Pursuit season 2
Streaming now on Apple TV
Prefer your terrifying animals real?
Adelaide’s Breakout Productions is back with a second season following elite snake catchers taking on some of the world’s deadliest animals, with SA’s Wild Picture Post handling post-production.
Storm Boy
Streaming now ABC iview, Prime Video, Brollie, Google Play, iTunes, SBS On Demand, Youtube
This quintessentially South Australian children’s classic celebrates its 50th anniversary this year as one of Australia’s most beloved films.
Released in 1976 as the third feature film produced by the South Australian Film Corporation, following Sunday Too Far Away and Picnic at Hanging Rock, Storm Boy introduced SA to the world through Colin Thiele’s iconic story, the breathtaking landscapes of the Coorong, and stellar performances from a young Greg Rowe and David Gulpilil.
Coming soon
The Fox
In cinemas 29 October and screening at Adelaide Film Festival
A fox hunter catches a magical, shape-shifting fox (voiced by Olivia Colman) which offers to turn his unfaithful fiancée into his idea of the perfect woman.
Obviously, nothing could possibly go wrong.
SA writer-director Dario Russo turns the bizarre bargain into a dark fairytale starring Jai Courtney and Emily Browning, with the late, great Sam Neill voicing a hilariously foul-mouthed magpie.
Austin season 3
Coming to ABC TV and ABC iview in 2026
Michael Theo returns as Austin, preparing to marry Haley while his parents reconsider their divorce and everyone descends on Haley’s family farm for the wedding.
Season three was filmed around Adelaide and the Adelaide Hills through the ABC SAFC Content Pipeline Fund, with the production injecting more than $3 million into SA’s economy.
Wolf Creek: Legacy
In cinemas 19 March 2027
John Jarratt returns as Mick Taylor in the third Wolf Creek film, hunting an American family whose dream outback trip turns into a nightmare.
South Australian Sean Lahiff directs the SA-shot film, more than 20 years after the original, with the creator of the franchise and its original director Greg McLean producing alongside South Australian producer Kristian Moliere.
Premiering at Adelaide Film Festival (14-25 October)
The Debt
A woman and her ten-year-old ward become trapped on a secluded estate, where she faces a horrifying choice: her own life, or the child’s.
The First Nations-led horror takes on some seriously heavy territory, with themes around punishment, responsibility and survival.
Co-written by Yankunytjatjara writer Pearl Berry and Piri Eddy, directed by Johanis Lyons-Reid and produced by Yankunytjatjara producer Lilla Berry, this is the third feature from SAFC’s Film Lab: New Voices.
Ruby, Ruby
World premiere
SA writer-director Ursula Dabrowsky’s supernatural horror starts with a real local ghost story: Ruby Bland, an 18-year-old who died in Kapunda in 1909 and is said to haunt St John’s Cemetery.
In the film, Ollie and Hannah become trapped there and awaken Ruby’s vengeful ghost.
KUMARANGK: Sacred Women’s Business
From Wotjobaluk and Ngarrindjeri director Tracey Rigney, Ngarrindjeri producer Josh Trevorrow and SA producer Carolyn Johnson, this poignant feature documentary unravels the historically sidelined story of the Ngarrindjeri women protestors who resisted the building of the bridge from Goolwa to Hindmarsh Island (Kumarangk) in the 1990s.
Aftermath
From SA co-director Jared Nicholson and Ben Lawrence and producers Rebecca Barry and SA’s Scott Baskett, this feature documentary is a sobering and insightful exploration of the aftermath of the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre and its impact on the survivors.
Further ahead: What’s being made now
Lady Death
In production – release date TBA
A legendary Soviet sniper, British commandos, Nazi twins and giant killer wolves, all filmed in South Australia, with Kuitpo Forest doubling as 1940s Europe.
Writer-director Kiah Roache-Turner’s action-horror stars Masha Basman as Lyudmila “Lady Death” Pavlichenko, inspired by the real Soviet sniper credited with killing more than 300 enemy soldiers during WWII.
It’s All Going Very Well No Problems At All
Release date TBA
One of South Australia’s brightest acting exports Tilda Cobham-Hervey is writing, directing, producing and starring in her first feature behind the camera, with Dev Patel also producing.
She plays a struggling young Adelaide artist who forms an unexpected connection with an elderly man at the care home where she works.
Hollywood, via Adelaide
Not everything with a South Australian screen credit was shot here.
PDV – visual effects and post-production – can be just as important in shaping the final movie or series as what happens on set. And Adelaide companies are working on some of Hollywood’s biggest productions.
Rising Sun Pictures has now been part of two Academy Award-nominated visual-effects teams, for X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2015 and Sinners in 2026.
South Australia’s 10 per cent PDV rebate helps local studios compete for that work.
Kill Jackie
Streaming on Prime Video from 2 October
Catherine Zeta-Jones stars in and executive produces this eight-part revenge thriller about an art dealer whose past as an international cocaine dealer catches up with her.
Based on Nick Harkaway’s The Price You Pay, the series comes from SA company Steel Springs Pictures with SA’s Peter Lawson executive producing alongside Zeta-Jones, and SA studios KOJO, Resin and Studio 508 handling post-production.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping
In Australian cinemas 19 November 2026
The next Hunger Games film heads back 24 years before Katniss Everdeen’s story, to the 50th Hunger Games, won by a teenage Haymitch Abernathy.
Adelaide’s Rising Sun Pictures is working on the visual effects.
Wicker
In Australian cinemas 26 November 2026 and screening at Adelaide Film Festival
Olivia Colman plays a fisherwoman who finally has enough of being mocked by her village and orders herself a husband made of wicker.
Alexander Skarsgård plays the resulting man, with Peter Dinklage as the basketmaker.
Adelaide filmmaker Eleanor Wilson co-writes and directs with Alex Huston Fischer, while Studio 508 and KOJO handle the local PDV.
One Piece season 2
The Straw Hat Pirates head into the Grand Line in search of the world’s greatest treasure, encountering bizarre islands, new allies and dangerous enemies.
Adelaide’s Rising Sun Pictures worked on the visual effects for season two.
Pressure
Release date 29 October and screening at Adelaide Film Festival
The fate of D-Day hangs on a weather forecast in this WWII drama about Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) and meteorologist James Stagg (Andrew Scott) deciding whether conditions are safe enough to launch the invasion.
South Australian Anthony Maras directs and co-writes, with Adelaide’s Artisan Post Group handling PDV.
Also streaming now:
Why all this screen work matters
A screen production doesn’t just employ actors and camera crews. Someone has to build the sets, make the costumes, feed everyone, move equipment, book accommodation – or turn Kuitpo Forest into wartime Europe.
My Brilliant Career generated an estimated $19 million in local spending, 600 South Australian jobs and work for 410 small businesses – the largest single season of TV ever made in the state
Austin season three spent more than $3 million here, while Lady Death is expected to create more than 100 local jobs.
The SAFC supports that work through development and production funding, Adelaide Studios and initiatives including the ABC SAFC Content Pipeline Fund and PDV rebate.
Innovative programs like Film Lab: New Voices – run in partnership with Screen Australia and the Adelaide Film Festival – has launched Monolith, Lesbian Space Princess and now The Debt, while AFF’s Investment Fund also backs a range of film projects from SA and around the world.
And subscribe to the SAFC newsletter for SA screen industry news, opportunities and more.
