As walks go for a dog, this will be a long one.

The canine star of the new Red Dog film, a three-year-old kelpie named Phoenix, has started weeks of travelling around the country attending screenings to launch the film.

And once Australia is done, it's off to the Sundance Film Festival in the US then possibly the Berlin Film Festival.

Phoenix's journey started with the world premiere of the prequel Red Dog: True Blue at Karratha, the remote West Australian town where the film was shot, on the weekend.

Producer Nelson Woss, who is one of the red cloud kelpie's chaperones on his travels, estimates there were 4000 people at a free outdoor screening.

Without a yelp of protest, Phoenix has since appeared at screenings in Perth and Sydney before heading to Melbourne, Brisbane then regional areas.

It's a strategy that helped turned Red Dog, the warm-hearted drama about a wandering kelpie who united a mining community in the 1970s, into a hit five years ago.

Then Woss criss-crossed the country with Koko, the charismatic kelpie who became his family dog before dying of congestive heart disease in 2012.

The new film tells the story of how a city boy (Levi Miller) bonds with a scrappy young dog after being sent to live with his grandfather (Bryan Brown) on a Pilbara cattle station in in 1968.

Directed again by Kriv Stenders, the cast includes Jason Isaacs, Justine Clarke and Steve Le Marquand.

Woss said it was surprisingly difficult finding a new dog for the film, which opens on Boxing Day.

"It was silly," he said. "We did a nationwide search but we ended up going back to the original breeder who found Koko for us."

Woss said the two dogs, who are cousins, have very different personalities.

"They're both stars," he said. "They're similar in the sense that like actors, they walk into a room and change the temperature.

"But Koko was more Hollywood with more starlike behaviour. Phoenix is more of a pro. He's incredibly well trained by Zelie Bullen."

Woss was buzzing about the film being selected, unlike the original Red Dog, for Sundance in January.

"That's amazing for a film like this because we're not an edgy, tough Sundance film," he said. "But they just loved the story and thought it was such a throwback to those old family films that they've given it a special slot.

"So Red Dog: True Blue is going to roam like Red Dog."