Filmmaker Taika Waititi grew up in a very small New Zealand community amid poverty and intense challenges, but he credits those things with teaching him the value of laughter as a coping mechanism.

He spent his youth during the 1980s on a cultural diet of British and American TV comedies, working in underground theaters and creating his own madcap nonsense. Now he’s a recognized rising comedian, writer, actor and filmmaker.

He has written “Moana,” an animated Disney film set for release in November. He’s busy directing Marvel’s next “Thor” sequel in Australia. And he recently was accepted into the exclusive ranks of Academy Award voters.

While Waititi, who turns 41 Aug. 16, says all this is “far above expectations,” he insists he’s hardly filmmaking royalty. “Peter (Jackson, director of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy) is still the king,” he says. “I’m more like a distant relative coming for a visit.”

Waititi’s background also played a role in inspiring his latest film, the dark and comic romp “Hunt for the Wilderpeople.” It’s about the bond that grows between a sourpuss old man and an orphaned boy, as they go into hiding from child-welfare authorities.

Waititi gave himself a cameo in it playing a nincompoop preacher, who tells a group of mourners that life often makes us feel “like a sheep trapped in a maze designed by wolves.” He admits he could have been speaking about his own beginnings.

While the film plays most situations for laughs, it’s adapted from a serious 1986 novel by the late Barry Crump, “Wild Pork and Watercress.” Waititi’s first draft, in 2005, stayed true to the template with people getting shot and dying.

Then he made three other films — most famously “What We Do in the Shadows,” a mock documentary about vampires adapting to mundane Kiwi life after death. When he returned to the Crump project, his slant was considerably more optimistic, and the government was open to helping fund a backwoods comedy.

Shooting outdoors in remote natural areas of New Zealand over five weeks on a limited budget, Waititi was “crazily trying to get as much material as possible,” he says, and “Wilderpeople” has become a sizable box-office success in his home country and beyond.

Naturally, Waititi is pleased about that. “It’s getting harder and harder for films to do well, especially New Zealand films,” he says. “It’s a struggle, but for a small, independent film it’s been incredible ….”

Waititi also is excited about his inclusion in the Academy. The organization’s diversity is a big deal, he acknowledges, especially for someone coming from a Maori community.

“Filmmaking was something I never even heard of growing up,” he says. “That I should be doing it, and inspiring other Maori to have an interest in storytelling as a career, is something very important to me, because part of what makes us stand out in New Zealand is our cultural differences. The indigenous culture that’s unique to every country — (we) should be showing that off.”

Having entered the big-budget big league as director of “Thor: Ragnarok,” he says he feels free to bring his sense of creative freedom to that assignment.

“I wouldn’t really take a job where I felt my input wasn’t valued,” he says, adding that he has played a major role in shaping the storyline and choosing Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Karl Urban and Tessa Thompson for the cast.