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. 

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 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.” 

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.” 

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.”

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.”