Hollywood star Idris Elba said bringing elements like grief, fear, anger and love together in a survival drama can be tricky, but his upcoming film Beast combines them all convincingly.

Directed by Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Baltasar Kormakur, Beast follows Elba’s Dr Nate Samuels who must protect himself and his two teenage daughters from being hunted by a massive rogue lion during their trip to South Africa, the country where their recently deceased mother grew up.

The story of the film, shot extensively in South Africa, is based on an original idea by Jaime Primak Sullivan.

The classic theme of man versus nature, the British star said, had been given an “innovative spin” in the film by combining it with an emotional story. “If I’m honest, all the ingredients for this film are a little bit contradictory. It’s like, ‘Which film do we want to make?’ A film about loss, a father-daughter relationship, fear or do we want to make a film about poaching or the environment?”

“The challenge was trying to put all those ingredients into a cup, which I believe is an innovative spin on the man versus animal genre,” Elba said.

The 49-year-old actor believes it was important to have somebody like Kormakur, who has the experience of dealing with survival dramas, at the helm of the project. “Putting all those ingredients was trying to do quite a lot. And that was a challenge. But I think that was what attracted me to it, working with someone like Baltasar, who has had real experience in survival films.”

What was also new for Elba, the star of action films such as The Take, The Dark Tower, Hobbs & Shaw, Pacific Rim and Prometheus, was an opportunity to play an ordinary guy caught in an extraordinary situation. “I’ve done quite a bit of action, but playing a character that isn’t an action hero was challenging. But making the whole film, it was sort of satisfying to try and pull it off.”

In Beast, which will hit the theatres on Friday, the actor said they had consciously tried to not succumb to the usual tropes of survival dramas, where the beasts are usually villainised. “It was important that we kept that reality as closely balanced as we could, because we didn’t want to villainise the animal.”

The makers, Elba said, created a backstory for the lion as it is uncharacteristic of them to attack humans. “Separation, anger and desperation” were used to draw a connection between his character Dr Samuels and the animal.

“I definitely believe there is a symmetry between the man and the lion. They are connected by grief, loss, separation, anger and desperation. We wanted not to just villainise the lion. It needed to have a reason as to why the lion is doing this as it's very uncharacteristic for lions,” said Elba.

“So it was important to layer its backstory, which turns out quite similar in many ways to Nate’s backstory. All of that stuff sort of seeps into who they both were in the film,” he explained.

Beast, a Universal Pictures project, also features Leah Jeffries, Sharlto Copley and Iyana Halley in pivotal roles. Will Packer and James Lopez have produced the movie via their Will Packer Productions.