Is Ben Affleck’s ‘Animals’ Movie on Netflix Based on A True Story?

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Animals movie on Netflix.

If you watch a lot of movies, you might think that the plot of Animals, the new Ben Affleck Netflix movie, sounds a little familiar.

Directed by Affleck himself, who also co-wrote the script with Connor O. McIntyre and Billy Ray, Animals stars Affleck as a wealthy lawyer running an independently financed campaign to become the next mayor of Los Angeles. But just because he’s not affiliated with a political party doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his own problems. When a bad actor kidnaps Mark’s son, his true nature shows its face, and the dirty secrets between him and his wife (Kerry Washington) are forced to the surface.

The all-star Animals movie cast also includes Gillian Anderson, Adriana Paz with Luis Gerardo Méndez, and Steven Yeun. (Originally, Affleck had wanted his buddy Matt Damon and his ex-wife Jennifer Garner to star in the film, but it didn’t work out.) So why does the plot of this movie ring some bells? Is Animals based on a true story? Not quite.

Is Netflix’s Animals movie based on a true story?

The Animals 2026 movie is not based on a true story. The story is made-up, and the characters are not based on real-life people.

That said, the plot of the story is very similar to the plot of the 1959 novel King’s Ransom by American author Ed McBain, about a wealthy tycoon named Douglas King, who is ready and willing to pay the ransom for his kidnapped son. But then his son comes home safe, and King realizes it was someone else’s son who was kidnapped. Will King still pay to save this unrelated child?

That novel was also the basis for Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 acclaimed Japanese film High and Low, and Spike Lee’s recent modern-day remake of the Kurosawa film, Highest 2 Lowest. In fact, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Affleck revealed that he initially pulled the plug on Animals—two weeks before production was set to begin—after he heard about Lee’s film.

“We get very close to shooting, and then somebody said to me, ‘Hey, you know, there’s this other movie that Spike [Lee] and Denzel [Washington] are doing that’s about a kidnapping,” Affleck says. “And I was like, ‘Oh, shit.'”

Affleck has not, apparently, seen the Kurosawa film, and does not consider Animals to be another film adaptation of Ed McBain’s King’s Ransom novel. He considers it to be an original film.

“What I’m really interested in is something wholly apart from, I think, what these other movies are dealing with,” Affleck told Entertainment Weekly, referring to High and Low and Highest 2 Lowest. “I think it’s different enough, at least from what I understand about those movies, that this will be judged on its own merits, frankly.”