Alex Casey talks to Bookworm’s Ant Timpson and Emma Slade about breathing new life into a decades-old Canterbury urban legend. 

Legend tells of a farmer who was driving home across the Canterbury plains at dusk. In the distance, right in the middle of the road, was a huge, jet black creature noshing roadkill. The beast stayed still as they slowly, drove past. “Then this thing looked up at the car, and its eyes were shining bright yellow,” Emma Slade, producer of Bookworm, recounted breathlessly. “That’s when they realised it was a ginormous cat – not a domestic cat, but a full-on panther.” 

That “full-on panther” is better known as the Canterbury Panther, an urban legend that has stalked the Canterbury plains for half a century. Kaiapoi resident Frances Clark made national headlines in July 1977 when she opened the blinds early one morning to see a large tiger-sized cat sitting at her front gate. “I know a pig when I see one, and I know an Alsatian as well,” she said at the time. “But it was definitely a tiger.” 

Clark was initially discredited, until sizeable paw prints and large droppings were found on a nearby beach in the days following. A military grade search was launched across land and sky, but no giant cat was found. Things remained relatively quiet until the late 90s, when a woman spotted a black cat “the size of a Labrador” in 1996, and another sighting of a black panther was reported in Mackenzie Country in 1999. 

The 2000s also brought many brushes with big cats, including a big black cat “with a tail too long to be a dog’s”, spotted by a truck driver on a Mayfield farm. A disturbing 2007 encounter, recorded in Scott Bainbridge’s New Zealand Mysteries, details a large black cat seen dragging a lamb across a paddock in Mount Somers. In 2011, Campbell Live’s Geoff Mackley and Bradley Ambrose captured a “large mystery cat” while filming a snowstorm on Kaikōura Road. 

There’s been dozens more blurry photographs and videos captured throughout the region, including this compelling footage from mountaineer and researcher Mark Inglis in 2020, and a harrowing testimony from a possum hunter that same year. Jesse Feary described seeing “this black streak” in the Ashley Forest. The next weekend, he returned to the same site and shot a big 1m long black cat that weighed 11kg and had 14mm fangs – and he thought it was a baby.

“I do a lot of possuming, I see wild cats all the time,” he said. “Normally they are quite scrawny, but this is monstrous.’’ 

Ant Timpson, writer and director of Bookworm, has long been a fan of the Canterbury Panther. “Look, I used to believe in Bigfoot and absolutely believed in the Bermuda Triangle too,” he laughed, before cursing how QAnon and other “conspiracy bullshit” has tainted the beauty of a good urban legend. “They are profoundly nostalgic, in a way,” he explained. “They give us this sense that the world is this great, beautiful, wondrous place where anything could happen.” 

That sense of wonder is why the panther became the perfect addition to Timpson’s family adventure film Bookworm, in which the precocious Mildred (Nell Fisher) heads into the Canterbury wilderness with her dropkick magician father (Elijah Wood). “I’ve got deep family roots in that area and wanted to set it there, so the panther was just a natural, beautiful cohesion to have in there,” said Timpson. “It’s a love letter to the region, to be honest.”

Slade didn’t share the same connection to the panther. “I knew nothing about it at all,” she laughed. “Even when I read the script, I just thought it was some weird thing that Ant made up.” It wasn’t until she visited the Canterbury region to scope out locations that she heard compelling encounters from locals, who spoke of scuttling shapes and destroyed stock. “These were real salt of the earth, no fuss kind of people,” she said. “And some of them were genuinely fearful.”

Morgana O’Reilly, who plays Mildred’s mum Zo, admitted to being a “self-absorbed JAFA” who knew nothing of the panther before the film. Theo Shakes, a hiker they encounter on the trail, was also none the wiser. The Spinoff had slightly more luck with Vanessa Stacey, who plays Angelina. “I lived in Ōtautahi from the age of eight and had heard of the urban myths about a Canterbury Panther but like most myths I can’t actually remember where I’d first heard of it.” 

But the reporting equivalent of a Canterbury Panther sighting was getting comment from Lord of the Rings star and honorary New Zealander Elijah Wood, who graciously shared the following thoughts. “I initially assumed it was a fictional invention and later realised it was indeed mythic lore, with many sightings over decades,” he said. “Having spent nearly two months in the region, I did hear more than one account to suggest that there may be something out there.”

“Could it simply be very large feral house cats that have mutated over time, or is there some relative of a panther roaming the countryside?” Wood mused. “We may never know.”

During the 27 day shoot in the thick of the panther zone (Stuff has a terrific interactive map of recorded sightings across the region), Timpson wondered if life might imitate art. “I wanted to believe,” he said. “There was always the hope, and the fear, that we’d have a sighting – especially when we were pulling carcasses around.” Alas, the most unusual encounter was with large wild deer, which Timpson still optimistically posited “could be a big meal for someone.” 

In a shocking admission of poor health and safety protocols, Slade revealed she did not draw up an action plan in the event of a panther encounter, or attack, on location. “When we were out there, there was definitely a part of me going ‘stop it, it’s not real, but then another part of me going ‘…but what if it was?’” she said. “But no, I didn’t get quite as far as creating a health and safety plan – I had so many other things to think about, I didn’t get round to that one.”

Despite there still being no concrete proof of the Canterbury Panther – Feary’s compelling big black cat from 2020 was later dismissed by DNA scientists as “just a cat” – Timpson hopes that Bookworm will reinvigorate a new generation of believers. In fact, he’s so impassioned by the cause that he is willing to put forward a reward himself. “You know what? I’m putting $5000 down now. I can’t afford what the film offers but, if you have definitive proof, I will personally drop 5k.”

For any enthusiasts out there, Timpson suggests starting by triangulating all the sightings, and pindropping the best pie spots along the way for sustenance. “We travelled great distances on our days off just to look for meat pies, which I feel is an ode to a panther on his great search for meat as well.” He recommends the BP in Methven, sausage rolls in Mount Somers and, of course, as many visits as you can to the world famous Sheffield Pies. 

“Sheffield Pies was actually on the call sheet, that’s how deranged we got about it. I think it’s probably the first time Sheffield Pies has ever been put into a call sheet.” 

Even if you aren’t a fan of pies, nor panthers, Timpson hopes there’s still plenty more in Bookworm for audiences to enjoy. “It’s a love letter to that deep south where I had a wild summer as a kid, just roaming around.” It is also an ode to the films that raised him. “This is a really nice throwback to the type of cinema that a lot of parents grew up with,” he said. “It’d be just great if all it does is help people forget about the woes of the world for a couple of hours.”

And if things go well, Slade even pledged to come up with an appropriate panther safety protocol in the event of a Bookworm sequel. “I reckon we’ll definitely have one in place by then,” she laughed. “Bookworm 2: The Revenge of the Panther.” 

Bookworm is in cinemas nationwide from today