The Fox Trailer: 5 Thrilling Facts About the Dark Comedy

Image Credit: Madman Entertainment — Official Trailer via YouTube

The Fox trailer is out today, and it is one of the strangest and most delightful trailers of the year. The new trailer for Dario Russo’s Australian black comedy fantasy dropped on 9 November 2026, just weeks before the film opens in Australian cinemas on 26 November, and it gives audiences their best look yet at a film where a talking fox, voiced by Olivia Colman, offers a heartbroken farmer a magical solution to his love life. The Fox trailer also carries a lump-in-the-throat detail: it features the voice of Sam Neill as a profane magpie, in one of the beloved actor’s final film roles.

If you like comedies that are sly, surreal and just a little bit wicked, this is a trailer worth your two minutes. Here is everything the new footage reveals, from the fox’s impossible bargain to the magic hole, the cast, and when you can watch the film.

The Fox Trailer: What Happens in the New Footage

The Fox trailer opens not with a joke but with a monologue. A voice runs through the peculiar interests of animals and humans alike, describing cats as torturers, dogs as degenerates, frogs as sex pests and magpies as busybodies, before turning to the strangest interest of all: humans making themselves miserable in relationships while acting powerless to change anything about it. It is cynical, profanity-laced and very funny, and it sets the tone for the whole film in under a minute.

Then the camera finds Nick, played by Jai Courtney, a wealthy rural landowner who has just discovered that his fiancee Kori, played by Emily Browning, is cheating on him. Nick is the kind of man who does everything right on paper and still ends up unhappy, and the trailer plays his misery for laughs without ever making him a joke. When he catches a rogue talking fox in his yard, the animal does not run. She talks. And she makes him an offer.

The fox, voiced with crisp malice by Olivia Colman, tells Nick about a mysterious hole in the ground with powers. Push Kori into it, she says, and the hole will transform her into the perfect partner. All Nick has to do is take the leap, literally. The Fox trailer shows him doing exactly that, and the results are gloriously unhinged. Kori climbs out of the hole as everything Nick thought he wanted, and then her increasingly bizarre and unsettling new quirks make him regret the whole bargain. The trailer keeps the best gags back, but the shape of the joke is clear: be careful what you wish for, especially when a fox is doing the granting.

The Fox Trailer Story: A Magic Hole and a “Perfect Partner”

At its heart, The Fox is a cautionary tale dressed up as a black comedy. The film follows Nick, the affable heir to a wealthy rural family, whose relationship with his fiancee Kori falls apart when he discovers her infidelity. A fox crosses his path at exactly the wrong moment, or exactly the right one, and offers him a shortcut no sensible person would take: a hole that changes people into whatever you want them to be. Just push her in.

The idea draws on Japanese and Korean folktales, where foxes are tricksters and shape-shifters, and director Dario Russo bends that folklore into something unmistakably Australian. The film was shot in Adelaide, in the lush greens of wine country, and the trailer is full of sunlit paddocks, big rural houses and animals that behave like people. The fox herself is brought to life with animatronic puppetry rather than pure computer effects, which gives her a strange, tactile presence on screen. She looks real enough to touch and wrong enough to be funny.

What makes the premise land is that it asks a question most people have asked in a bad relationship: what would happen if you could change your partner? The Fox trailer answers it the only honest way a dark comedy can, by showing Nick getting exactly what he asked for and hating every minute of it. Kori returns from the hole as the perfect partner on paper, and the comedy comes from watching perfection turn out to be far stranger than the flawed woman Nick started with.

The Fox Trailer Cast: Olivia Colman, Sam Neill and a Superb Ensemble

The Fox trailer is stacked with names, and the casting is half the joke. Olivia Colman, the Academy Award winner, voices the titular Fox, and the trailer lets her do what she does best: sound warm, reasonable and completely dangerous at the same time. Colman also leads the romance Wicker, which arrives in cinemas around the same season, so audiences will be hearing a lot from her this month. Jai Courtney plays Nick, the hunter and heartbroken landowner at the centre of the story, while Emily Browning plays Kori, the fiancee whose cheating sets the whole plot in motion.

Sam Neill voices the Magpie, the foul-mouthed bird who dispenses advice and gossip from the branches, and the trailer gives him some of its funniest lines. The supporting cast is a roll call of Australian screen talent: Damon Herriman as Derek, Claudia Doumit as Diana, Zlatko Buric as Kori’s father, Miranda Otto as Liz, and Frankie J. Holden, Heather Mitchell, Kim Gyngell and Peter O’Brien in supporting roles. It is the kind of ensemble that tells you the film is aiming higher than a simple joke machine.

Behind the camera, Dario Russo writes, directs, edits and even composes for the film, making The Fox his feature directorial debut. The film is produced by Kristina Ceyton, Samantha Jennings and Carly Maple for Causeway Films, the Australian production house behind Talk to Me and The Babadook, with major production investment from Screen Australia, Orogen Entertainment, A-Up Duck Productions and the South Australian Film Corporation. Madman Entertainment will distribute the film in Australia, while Protagonist Pictures handles international sales.

Sam Neill’s Final Film Role Makes The Fox Trailer Hit Differently

There is a poignancy to The Fox trailer that no marketing plan could have designed. Sam Neill, the Jurassic Park star and one of cinema’s most loved actors, died on 13 July 2026 at the age of 78, and The Fox was his final film. The film premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival on 19 October 2025, while Neill was still alive, and it went on to play the Sydney Film Festival and South by Southwest earlier this year. Now the new trailer arrives after his death, and hearing his voice crack jokes as a gloriously profane magpie is both funny and quietly moving.

Neill’s Magpie is not a dignified farewell performance. It is rude, gossipy and scene-stealing, which is exactly how his fans will want to remember him. The trailer leans into it, letting the bird deliver some of the sharpest lines in the footage. For audiences who grew up with Neill as Dr Alan Grant, the contrast is part of the charm: the same warm voice, now coming out of a feathered busybody with opinions about everyone else’s love life.

The film itself has already earned respect on the festival circuit, winning Best Director for Russo at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Early reviews have been warm, with The AU Review giving it three and a half stars out of five and calling it an absurdist comedy that is sly and unpredictable, while FilmInk praised it as a strong and sharply comedic debut. Not every critic was won over, but even the mixed notices agree on one thing: this is not a film you will forget in a hurry.

The Fox Trailer: 5 Thrilling Facts You Should Know

1. The trailer dropped today, 9 November 2026. The Fox trailer arrived just over two weeks before the film’s Australian cinema release, and it is the fullest look at the film so far.

2. Olivia Colman voices the fox, and Sam Neill voices the magpie. Two of the most recognisable voices in cinema play talking animals, and the trailer gives both of them room to be funny, strange and a little bit menacing.

3. The film opens in Australian cinemas on 26 November 2026. Madman Entertainment is releasing The Fox nationally in Australia on 26 November, with a Q&A tour taking the film through Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth from 18 November, with director Dario Russo and cast members appearing for post-film conversations.

4. It is a folktale with real puppetry. The fox is an animatronic puppet, not a digital creation, and the film draws on Japanese and Korean fox folklore while staying rooted in rural Australia.

5. The runtime is a tight 90 minutes. The Fox is a lean, punchy comedy that knows exactly how long its joke needs, and the trailer suggests it wastes none of that time.

The Fox Release Date, India Release and OTT: What We Know

The Fox opens in Australian cinemas on 26 November 2026, distributed by Madman Entertainment. A national Q&A tour begins on 18 November, taking director Dario Russo and members of the cast to Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth ahead of the wide release. The film runs for 90 minutes and carries a CTC rating in Australia.

An India theatrical release date has not been announced, and there is no confirmed OTT platform or streaming date yet. International sales are being handled by Protagonist Pictures, so a wider release outside Australia, including any India release or streaming premiere, will depend on those deals. For now, the 26 November Australian release is the only confirmed date, and audiences elsewhere will have to wait for further announcements.

That uncertainty is part of why the trailer matters. For a small Australian film with a huge voice cast, a trailer that travels is the whole campaign, and this one is built to travel: a famous fox, a beloved late actor, and a premise you can explain in one sentence. Expect the trailer to keep circulating while the film rolls out in Australia, and watch for international dates in the weeks after release.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did The Fox trailer release?
The Fox trailer was released on 9 November 2026, a little over two weeks before the film opens in Australian cinemas on 26 November 2026.

Who voices the fox in The Fox?
Olivia Colman voices the titular Fox, the talking animal who offers Nick a magical way to fix his relationship.

Is Sam Neill in The Fox?
Yes. Sam Neill voices the Magpie in The Fox. It was his final film role; Neill died on 13 July 2026 at the age of 78, and the film had premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2025.

Who stars in The Fox?
The Fox stars Jai Courtney as Nick and Emily Browning as Kori, with Damon Herriman, Claudia Doumit, Zlatko Buric, Miranda Otto, Frankie J. Holden, Heather Mitchell, Kim Gyngell and Peter O’Brien in support, and the voices of Olivia Colman and Sam Neill.

When is The Fox releasing?
The Fox releases in Australian cinemas on 26 November 2026. An India release date and OTT platform have not been announced yet.

Who directed The Fox?
The Fox is written and directed by Dario Russo in his feature directorial debut. It is produced by Causeway Films, the production house behind Talk to Me and The Babadook.

The Fox trailer is the kind of trailer that sells a film in ninety seconds: a talking fox, a magic hole, a perfect partner who turns out to be anything but, and two legendary voices having the time of their lives. Whether you come for Olivia Colman’s fox, Sam Neill’s magpie or the sheer weirdness of the premise, this is a dark comedy worth keeping on your watchlist. The film opens in Australian cinemas on 26 November 2026, and the trailer is out now.