Trailer
Plot summary
Ricky Baker has been moved around the New Zealand foster system without a placement sticking, until Bella and her husband Hector take him onto their farm. Hector keeps to himself, interested in hunting, while Ricky grows close to Bella. When she dies of a stroke, Hector learns the state plans to relocate the boy, through the agent Paula Hall. Ricky fakes his own death, accidentally burns down the shed and runs into the bush. Hector follows and injures his ankle, so the two must stay out there until it heals. Paula finds the wreckage at the farm and says Hector has kidnapped Ricky, and a nationwide manhunt begins.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film grossed NZ$1,263,000 in New Zealand on its opening weekend, the highest grossing opening weekend for a New Zealand film as defined by the New Zealand Film Commission, ahead of What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?'s $912,000 record in 1999.
- Grossing US$23.2 million, Hunt for the Wilderpeople remains the highest-grossing New Zealand film ever made, once international co-productions are left out of the count.
- Taika Waititi began adapting the book in 2005 and completed multiple different drafts, the early ones staying true to it while later versions departed from it in several ways; he cast Julian Dennison from earlier work they had done together on a commercial.
- The film had a budget of approximately NZ$4.5 million, of which $2 million came from the New Zealand Film Commission, and it was shot over five weeks almost entirely using a single camera.
