A Hollywood movie starring Australian Kodi Smit-McPhee has been caught up in an animal rights drama over the slaughtering of bison.

Production of The Solutrean​ is being investigated over allegations that five bison were killed for scene that takes place after a hunt in contravention of American Humane Association regulations.

Smit-McPhee, most recently seen in Gallipoli and X-Men: Apocalypse, stars in what is described, in echoes of The Revenant, as an Ice Age epic set 20,000 years ago about surviving dangerous conditions to get home after a hunting expedition goes bad.