The film has been described by Bryan Brown as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) meets The Piano (1993).
This is the first feature film of a Newton Thornburg novel to be made since Cutter's Way (1981) which was around the time when the "Beautiful Kate" novel had been first published in 1982.
Finding the right cast was always going to be difficult, however, casting the lead role of Ned, for director Rachel Ward was clear: "Ben Mendelsohn just is Ned and in a way the choice was so obvious that I was scared of it."