Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

Pop CultureMarch 10, 2025

Why there’s never been so much Canterbury on screen

Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

Alex Casey goes inside the booming film and TV industry in Canterbury, and talks to the people championing the region as Aotearoa’s next big screen destination. 

If you’ve been keeping up with New Zealand film and television, you might have noticed that there’s been a familiar character popping up time and time again recently. Whether lurking in the shadows of Dark City: The Cleaner, the bristling gold grasses of We Were Dangerous, or the stony, snobby school in Tinā, the Canterbury region has become a recurring backdrop in some of the biggest local productions of the last few years. 

Start looking for it and you’ll see it everywhere. It’s there in the towering mountains and lush green forests of Bookworm, the 1970s era bustling New Regent street in Head South, and the jagged Kaikōura coastline of Friends Like Her. This year doesn’t look to be slowing down either, with Canterbury working hard in the background of Joy Cowley adaptation Holy Days, and upcoming documentaries Marlon Williams: Ngā ao e Rua: Two Worlds and project fiftyone.

What has led to this recent boom in onscreen storytelling from the south? Could this all this movie and TV magic be the work of the Christchurch Wizard, or is there a less mystical answer to be found? I infiltrated the local industry to find out who and what is behind Canterbury’s rapidly-growing sizzle reel. 

We Were Dangerous filmed in Banks Peninsula in 2023

Petrina D’Rozario, Head of Screen CanterburyNZ, unlocked some of the answers immediately: as always, it comes back to money. In 2021, the Christchurch City Council approved a $1.5million Screen Canterbury NZ production grant to attract both domestic and international productions to the region. “That really set the tone for producers wanting to come and film here and pressed that accelerator in the direction of growth,” says D’Rozario. “They brought their projects, they saw that we’ve got the crew and the locations, and they realized we’re open for business.” 

The $1.5 million grant is the only regional screen incentive currently available in Aotearoa. Distributed over three years, it has already brought 11 different productions to Canterbury, creating 135 full-time roles. “In one calendar year we were shooting for about 240 days, and there was so much buzz in the city,” says D’Rozario. The council investment has also returned nearly $18 million to the region to date. “There’s a perception in people that making movies is fun and frivolous and doesn’t make any money, and we really need to clear that up.”

While handing out dosh sweetens the deal, D’Rozario adds that Canterbury also provides many other benefits. “We take pride in talking about our region in terms of the diversity of locations that we’ve got. You can go from oceans, to Alps, to big open farmland all in one day.” There’s also the international airport just 15 minutes away, and a “red carpet treatment” when it comes to procuring filming permits. Indeed, at the recent Tinā premiere in the town hall (Tinā did not access the grant but did shoot a significant part of the film in Christchurch), director Miki Magasiva shouted out the “very hospitable” council.

Emma Slade, second from right, shooting Bookworm in Canterbury

Emma Slade from Firefly Films came from Auckland to Christchurch to make The Changeover, based on the Margaret Mahy novel, way back before any of this in 2016. “It was a really positive experience, and the council worked very closely with us to navigate all the challenges of production – particularly finding production space and things like that because it still wasn’t that long after the quakes,” she recalls. “I remember feeling, even back then, that Christchurch really needed to become a major hub for the screen industry, because it had everything that we needed.”

Since then, the establishment of Screen Canterbury and the screen production grant has seen Slade bring two more productions down south – Bookworm starring Elijah Wood and Nell Fisher, and the upcoming Joy Cowley adaptation Holy Days, starring Miriam Margolyes. “Bookworm was always going to be set in Canterbury, because it was about the Canterbury Panther, but with the trickery of movie making, you can always cheat locations,” she says. “There’s no doubt that the grant made a really massive difference in enabling us to actually shoot the whole thing there.” 

Elijah Wood and Nell Fisher in Bookworm, filmed in Methven

It was a similar story for the filming of Holy Days, a road trip caper about three nuns and a young boy travelling the country, which filmed in Christchurch last year. “Even though the bulk of the story happens in and around the Canterbury region, we were originally going to be Auckland-based and looking at ways to cheat that, because we weren’t sure if we’d be able to afford to come down,” Slade says. “Again, it was the grant that made it possible to do that.” 

One of the growing pains with what D’Rozario describes as a “groundswell” of productions in Canterbury is having enough local crew available. “We are building a very skilled local talent pool, but we don’t have quite enough yet to offer,” she says. Having encountered the crew shortage on Bookworm, Slade and Firefly films collaborated with Te Wānanga Whare Tapere o Takitimu to launch the Share the Knowledge screen training programme in Christchurch. Running during the production of Holy Days, it provided an opportunity to upskill dozens of local crew and students. 

“We’re really proud of it because it actually worked,” Slade said of the NZQA recognised programme, which had both theoretical and practical elements. “When you go on set and you can’t tell who’s a student and who’s a crew member, that’s pretty impressive – and we know that the people that participated in the program had an absolute blast and a lot of support.” Slade adds that it also strengthens the argument to bring future productions down – “we really wanted to prove the fact that it could work and grow the crew base for Christchurch, which we’ve managed to do.” 

A giant virtual screen in a studio showing the New Zealand countryside
Kōawa Studios’ sound stage during filming for Holy Days. (Photo: Supplied)

Firefly Films also had another crucial collaboration during the production of Holy Days with Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha, the University of Canterbury, and their brand new facilities at Kōawa Studios. Boasting advanced motion capture, six sound mixing facilities and a state-of-the-art virtual production soundstage featuring a 4.5-metre high screen with 14.8 million pixels, Kōawa serves as both the home for students undergoing the Bachelor of Digital Screen programme, as well as being open for potential commercial opportunities in the wider industry. 

Holy Days was the very first external commercial production to use the Kōawa Facilities at the end of last year. “They had literally just lay down the new carpet and were basically ripping the plastic off the soundboard,” laughs Slade, “the planets aligned.” For a road trip film, heading out on location for long days with a cast including 83-year-old Margolyes and 10-year-old Elijah Tamati wasn’t going to be feasible. “We knew that we needed to shoot all the car sequences on a volume stage, because it would save us masses of time and hassle,” says Slade. 

Moving the real star of the film, a rusty old 1965 Holden station wagon, into the soundstage and rendering Aotearoa’s landscape in 14.8 million pixel resolution behind it, they were able shoot nearly a month’s worth of footage in just a few short days. “Considering it was new for them and it was new for us, it worked really well,” Slade says. “The resources that they have are phenomenal, and it looks really great in the film. We actually have literally just finished watching a cut this morning and it’s looking really, really, really fabulous.”

Sam Witters smiles at the camera in an emerald green blouse
Sam Witters, director of Kōawa Studios

Students from the Digital Screen degree were also selected to work on Holy Days when it came to the UC campus. Sam Witters, director of Kōawa Studios, says the collaboration provided an invaluable education and upskilling opportunity. “I think the alchemy of it all is the ability to attract the right industry onto the campus, physically, because our students need to see that”. With Kōawa also partnering with Aardman Animations (Wallace and Gromit), and local cartoon favourites Kiri and Lou, Witter says the work and training opportunities for Christchurch students are now “second to none”. 

“My next big job is making sure that these students and all this talent all stay here and have somewhere to work – and that’s all about creating a secure production environment.” 

With the Kōawa facilities continuing to expand and commercialise, and the Screen Canterbury NZ grant greenlit until at least June 2026, that secure future could be well on the way. The next projects to receive the grant and get underway this year include action-packed kids adventure series Maui & Elvis, Singapore Malay drama Korban (Sacrifice) and Mana Atua, which follows an ex-gangster turned pastor as he goes inside Aotearoa’s most infamous gangs.

“It’s funny, I met with a couple of producers and they were like, ‘oh is Christchurch back? Is it… open?’” says D’Rozario. “I still think there’s some work to be done to clear this psychological block – we are open, we’ve been open for a while, and there are great times for us ahead.” And although Canterbury still trails behind Auckland and Wellington when it comes to market share in the screen industry, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of healthy rivalry. 

“I’m always taking jibes at them up there,” she laughs. “We are coming for you.” 

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Anna Rawhiti-Connell
— Senior writer
Keep going!
It’s Laura McGoldrick’s life in TV (Photo: Sky / Design: Tina Tiller)
It’s Laura McGoldrick’s life in TV (Photo: Sky / Design: Tina Tiller)

Pop CultureMarch 8, 2025

‘Gives me the ick’: The interview Laura McGoldrick will never watch again

It’s Laura McGoldrick’s life in TV (Photo: Sky / Design: Tina Tiller)
It’s Laura McGoldrick’s life in TV (Photo: Sky / Design: Tina Tiller)

The broadcaster and presenter looks back on her life in television, including Coro’s teen pregnancy scandal, being a ‘5.30pm telly girl’ and meeting her future husband on camera. 

As broadcaster and presenter for Sky Sport, Laura McGoldrick regularly finds herself on the sidelines of some of the most exciting and dramatic moments in sporting history. Whether it’s commentating the White Ferns through a cricket T20 world cup win or a nailbiting Warriors victory, McGoldrick adores the unpredictable theatre of a high-stakes sporting event. “You turn up to work and you genuinely have no idea what’s going to happen, which is so exciting,” McGoldrick tells The Spinoff. “I love any great story that gets told within a sporting game.”

McGoldrick’s latest role on ACC Does Game of 2 Halves is the perfect combination of her two loves of sports and entertainment. The fast-paced, high energy quiz show sees teams of sports stars compete against each other to answer a series of sports related questions, with quizmaster McGoldrick ready to use the buzzer to keep the contestants in check. “I’m competitive by nature, so I enjoy others going at it and it’s good fun,” she says. ”Sport gives us so much in terms of entertainment, and it’s cool to put the ultimate sports fans and athletes to the test.” 

As a new season of Game of 2 Halves kicks off, we did our warm-up stretches and put McGoldrick through several rounds of similarly intense quiz questions, all relating to her first TV crush, her favourite TV guilty pleasure and her most watched TV show of all time. 

The ACC does Game of 2 Halves

My earliest TV memory is… Coronation Street, because my mum loved it. There was a period of time where I really hit my straps with it, because Sarah Louise was pregnant and she was the same age as me at the time, and it was a bit catastrophic. I was a huge Blossom fan, with her friend Six, which I just thought was the weirdest name going. I was a big 5.30pm telly girl – so the Friends reruns, a bit of The Nanny, Home and Away – I used to hit that omnibus like nobody’s business. 

The show I refused to miss when I was younger was… Shortland Street. I loved Minnie and Marj. I loved it because they were New Zealanders, they sounded like me. 

My earliest TV crush was… Jonathan Taylor Thomas from Home Improvement. Just magnificent. Oh, I loved him. He was my big crush. 

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— Editor

The live TV moment that haunts me is… Oh, there’s plenty. My husband [cricketer Martin Guptill] and I met in the Sky green room, and I’ve never, ever gone back and watched that interview, and I never will, because I think it would be horrific. It gives me secondhand ick thinking about that, because it must have been a bit flirty, and you just don’t want to see that play out. 

Also, I was only 20 when I got my first job for Sky, and I’d never used an earpiece or had an autocue before. So the second show I ever did, I was still becoming accustomed to having people talk in my ear. We were on air, and someone made a joke on set and it landed very well, and everyone was laughing. Then somebody – and I believed at the time that it was somebody on the set – said “just like Glee”. At the time, I loved Glee, so I went “I love Glee!” Everybody stopped talking and looked at me, like “what?” and I realised it had come from someone in my ear. That does still keep me up at night, that I was talking to somebody that wasn’t there.

The TV ad I can’t stop thinking about is… Those NZ Post ones with the Opshop song. They used to get me every time, absolute floods of tears. I used to love the scorched almond one at Christmas time, where the wee girl would wrap up the scorched almonds.

My TV guilty pleasure is… There was a period in my life where I watched quite a lot of Geordie Shore and my father actually said to me that he was really disappointed in me, and then I stopped watching it. I don’t mind popping into the Kardashians every now and again, and just checking to see that we’ve all lost touch with reality there. I also cannot cope with going to bed and not knowing the outcome of what we’ve just watched, so I’ll binge and stay up late and then pay the price for staying up late. 

The most memorable live sporting event that I’ve been part of is… The sense of sheer pride when I worked on the finals of the men’s and women’s T20 World Cups. It was appreciating the magnitude of what I was working on because we don’t always appreciate how huge cricket is globally. Getting to go down on the field and be some of the first people to talk to the World Cup winners was a great privilege. I just love it all. I’m very lucky. 

The TV show I loved and wished I’d been involved with is… Will and Grace. It just looked like great fun. I’ve really enjoyed watching all the snippets from the Saturday Night Live 50 year anniversary, and I enjoy watching some of the American late night talk shows, like Stephen Colbert, and their interview techniques. 

My most watched show of all time is… Friends. It’s my safe place. I’m not going to be upset by anything that happens on it, I know that everything’s going to work out OK, and that’s a nice place to be. It still makes me laugh. I went through a whole series of just really watching Ross and his physical comedy, and I was like, “this guy is a genius”. Each time I watch it back, I appreciate something different. 

The TV show I recommend to everyone is… Shrinking on Apple TV+. It’s got Harrison Ford and Jason Segel in it. Harrison Ford is so funny, I enjoy it so much. 

My controversial TV opinion is… I’ve never watched Breaking Bad, and I’ve never watched Game of Thrones. I have no intention of ever watching them. They just don’t take my fancy. 

The last thing I watched on television was… Last night, I watched the Black Caps beat Pakistan in the opening game of the Champions Trophy. 

The ACC Does Game of 2 Halves screens on Thursdays on Sky Sport at 8pm and Sky Open at 8.30pm, and is available on demand on Sky Go and Sky Sport Now.