News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Taika Waititi named New Zealander of the Year

Taika Waititi named New Zealander of the Year

“Hunt for the Wilderpeople director Taika Waititi has been named as the 2017 New Zealander of the Year,” as reported on TV3.ie. “I just found out the news. Wow, amazing. Thank you so…

The Inland Road Makes for a Satisfying Debut

The Inland Road Makes for a Satisfying Debut

“In the stunned aftermath of a fatal road accident, a directionless 16-year-old half-Maori runaway drifts with unpredictable consequences into the lives of strangers in New Zealander Jackie van Beek’s assured first feature, The Inland…

Disney Coup for Director Niki Caro

Disney Coup for Director Niki Caro

The new live-action Mulan remake has secured Whale Rider director Niki Caro to helm. According to online women’s magazine, Bustle, “The Hollywood Reporter issued the reminder that Caro will be only Disney’s…

Celebrity Endorsements Around Every Corner

Celebrity Endorsements Around Every Corner

She lives in one of the most picturesque and exclusive areas in California – Montecito. But even media mogul Oprah Winfrey, 63, was blown away by New Zealand’s stunning views, while taking a break…

KJ Talks Candidly about the World of Archie

KJ Talks Candidly about the World of Archie

Welcome to the scandalous, abs-filled, hormonal world of Riverdale. The CW teen drama has taken a decidedly broodier and definitely sexier take on the Archie comics, and a lot of that has to do…

Phil Keoghan’s Le Ride Screens at US Festival

Phil Keoghan’s Le Ride Screens at US Festival

New Zealander Phil Keoghan, host of the popular television show The Amazing Race, will open the American Documentary Film Festival on 31 March with Le Ride, which had its world premiere at…

Michael Jackson Chimp Movie Attracts Taika Waititi

Michael Jackson Chimp Movie Attracts Taika Waititi

Thor: Ragnarok director New Zealander Taika Waititi has signed on to direct Bubbles, a stop-motion animated film about Michael Jackson’s pet chimpanzee, alongside Emmy Award-winning Mark Gustafson. “It’s an idea that fascinates me and one…

Frankie Adams the Unfindable Expanse Actress

Frankie Adams the Unfindable Expanse Actress

The men behind adapting the popular Expanse novels to the screen faced a massive challenge in season two – finding the perfect actor to play beloved favourite, Bobbie Draper. And they found her, in…

One Thousand Ropes Premieres in Berlin

One Thousand Ropes Premieres in Berlin

“Childbirth becomes a powerful vessel for renewal in this deeply felt drama about a Samoan former fighter atoning for the violence that divided his family and exiled him to solitude,” the Hollywood Reporter’s David…

Sundance Grand Jury Winner Stars Melanie Lynskey

Sundance Grand Jury Winner Stars Melanie Lynskey

The presciently titled I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, starring New Plymouth-born actor Melanie Lynskey, pulled off a surprise victory at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Awards ceremony taking the grand…

Taika Waititi Talks Thor: Ragnarok

Taika Waititi Talks Thor: Ragnarok

“It came as a large surprise to many when Marvel announced that it would be handing Thor: Ragnarok’s directorial reigns over to New Zealand film director, actor and comedian Taika Waititi,” writes Tiny Diapana…

Mary Kills People Star Jay Ryan Takes the Risk

Mary Kills People Star Jay Ryan Takes the Risk

Auckland-born actor Jay Ryan, 35, best known for his roles as Jack Scully in the Australian soap opera Neighbours and Vincent Keller in the American television series Beauty & the Beast, now has a…

Melanie Lynskey Teams up with Elijah Wood

Melanie Lynskey Teams up with Elijah Wood

New Zealand-born actor Melanie Lynskey, 39, stars alongside Elijah Wood in crime thriller I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, which premiered at this month’s Sundance Film Festival. Collider’s Matt Goldberg reviews…

KJ Apa’s Dark Take on Comic Book Archie

KJ Apa’s Dark Take on Comic Book Archie

Star of American television show Riverdale, New Zealand actor KJ Apa’s take on the high school sophomore Archie goes far deeper than the inevitable love triangle situating him as the “good guy” between BFFs…

Trio of Films to Screen at Berlin Film Festival

Trio of Films to Screen at Berlin Film Festival

Three New Zealand films will screen at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. Poi E: The Story of Our Song and new-comer, The Inland Road, directed by Jackie van Beek, will both feature in the Generation…

Posters Inspired by Taika Waititi’s Hit Film

Posters Inspired by Taika Waititi’s Hit Film

For Little White Lies’ latest creative brief, the film magazine asked its readers to design a wanted poster inspired by Taika Waititi’s “charming” 2016 comedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople. “We were blown away by the standard…

Long-Lasting Significance Of LOTR Trilogy

Long-Lasting Significance Of LOTR Trilogy

On the 15th anniversary of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, actors Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen and Viggo Mortensen reflect on the trilogy’s indelible impression. The film series was…

Jemaine Clement’s David Bowie-Ode Best in Moana

Jemaine Clement’s David Bowie-Ode Best in Moana

“He may appear in just one scene, but Tamatoa, the glam rock crustacean voiced by Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement, is quite possibly Moana’s most appealing character,” according to Slate’s Marissa Martinelli. “Now you…

Shortland Street’s KJ Apa Hits US TV Screens

Shortland Street’s KJ Apa Hits US TV Screens

Archie’s certainly not a kid anymore. Or at least not the same kid we knew from the old Archie comics, according to USA Today. He’s a hot, ripped 16-year-old, and a New Zealander –…

Hunt For The Wilderpeople Best Movie of 2016

Hunt For The Wilderpeople Best Movie of 2016

Hunt for the Wilderpeople has topped Empire Magazine’s list of top movies (released in the UK) of 2016. “To say that Hunt For The Wilderpeople was a surprise is perhaps overstating it. Anyone…

Moana – A Magical Addition to Disney’s Collection

Moana – A Magical Addition to Disney’s Collection

“Moana is both a revival of the Disney classic and a bold step away from their time honored tales,” writes Meredith Placko in a review for Comicbook.com. “While she may be the daughter…

Michala Banas Gets Her Bogan On

Michala Banas Gets Her Bogan On

Acclaimed actor Wellington-born Michala Banas, 38, had never been to a speedway before being cast as foul-mouthed and tough as nails Amber in the hit ABC comedy Upper Middle Bogan. “That world was totally new…

Keisha Castle-Hughes in Negotiations for FBI Crime-Drama ‘Manifesto’

Keisha Castle-Hughes in Negotiations for FBI Crime-Drama ‘Manifesto’

New Zealand actress Keisha Castle-Hughes is in negotiations for Discovery Channel’s high-profile FBI drama Manifesto, as reported in Deadline. Castle-Hughes “will play Tabby, a street agent who partners with FBI special agent Jim…

How Pacific Islanders Helped Moana Find Its Way

How Pacific Islanders Helped Moana Find Its Way

Fine attention to detail and constant feedback from John Musker and Ron Clements, the writer-director team behind Moana’s cultural advisory group The Oceanic Story Trust, has helped shape the Disney film on every level, Vanity…

Peter Jackson to Produce Sci-Fi Series Adaptation

Peter Jackson to Produce Sci-Fi Series Adaptation

Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson will produce an adaptation of British author Philip Reeve’s steampunk series Mortal Engines, the script which the New Zealander has also co-written. Another Academy Award winner, Christian Rivers, Jackson’s long-term collaborator…

New Ghost in The Shell Behind the Scenes Released

New Ghost in The Shell Behind the Scenes Released

“Come 2017, Hollywood veteran Scarlett Johansson will be headlining Paramount’s lavish Ghost in the Shell movie as The Major, an elite cyborg enforcer who spearheads a task force known as Section 9,” writes Michael…

Melanie Lynskey Sticking to the Indies

Melanie Lynskey Sticking to the Indies

Melanie Lynskey, star of the latest Duplass brothers film, Rainbow Time, talks to Metro US about indies, acting for friends and being chummy with the most evil people in the world: film critics. “I feel…

Filmmaker Gregory King’s UFO Wins in Toronto

Filmmaker Gregory King’s UFO Wins in Toronto

New Zealand-born director Gregory King has won Best Short Drama for his 2014 film UFO at this year’s imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival held in Toronto. King said from Berlin, where he lives, that the…

Lucy Lawless on the Evolution of Fake Blood

Lucy Lawless on the Evolution of Fake Blood

New Zealand-born Lucy Lawless of Spartacus, Battlestar Galactica and Xena: Warrior Princess fame says she has noted major advances in props and fake blood since she began her career. “The technology now is so good….

Sam Neill: From Heartthrob To Vintner

Sam Neill: From Heartthrob To Vintner

Sam Neill of New Zealand’s Central Otago winery Two Paddocks, who is better known as an actor told the Financial Times’ Jancis Robinson that he “puts all his energy “into making beautiful…

Top of the Lake – Series With Star Location

Top of the Lake – Series With Star Location

“Across the globe and across generations”, there are stories with “settings as important as any character with dialogue,” according to an article in IndieWire. New Zealand’s Top of the Lake is one…

The Rehearsal Adaptation a Team Effort

The Rehearsal Adaptation a Team Effort

The spirit of collaboration runs deep in Alison Maclean’s The Rehearsal, the Canadian filmmaker’s often ambitious and hearteningly daring big screen adaptation of Man Booker Prize-winning author New Zealander Eleanor Catton’s first novel of…

No Caller ID Makes Hollywood’s Screamfest Lineup

No Caller ID Makes Hollywood’s Screamfest Lineup

Slasher film No Caller I.D., which was shot in one night and on a three-figure budget, has been accepted into Hollywood’s prestigious Screamfest Horror Film Festival. Best friends Guy Pigden and Harley Neville shot the…

What We Do In The Shadows – Mockumentary You Need to Watch

What We Do In The Shadows – Mockumentary You Need to Watch

Kiwi mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows has been included in a list of mockumentaries you will need to watch in an article on Vice. What We Do in the Shadows, directed,…

World-Class Creative Peter Jackson Says Dream

World-Class Creative Peter Jackson Says Dream

Seventeen-time Oscar winning director Peter Jackson spent some time recently with Forbes correspondent Brian Rashid to share his ideas about creativity, his processes, and mindset around being a world-class creative. “Jackson admittedly, does not consider…

Stunning NZ Films You Should Know About

Stunning NZ Films You Should Know About

“New Zealand certainly brings a fair few ‘bests’ to the table. Aside from being one of the most beautiful countries in the world, responsible for some of the greatest exploratory and scientific minds,…

NZ Selects ‘A Flickering Truth’ for Foreign-Language Category

NZ Selects ‘A Flickering Truth’ for Foreign-Language Category

New Zealand has selected Afghanistan-set documentary A Flickering Truth, which was produced and directed by Pietra Bretkelly, for the best foreign-language film category for the 2017 Academy Awards, as reported in The…

Cliff Curtis Joins Warner Bros’ Shark Pic ‘Meg’

Cliff Curtis Joins Warner Bros’ Shark Pic ‘Meg’

New Zealand actor Cliff Curtis has joined the cast for Warner Bros’ Shark Pic ‘Meg’, as reported in Deadline. The film is based on Steve Alten’s 1997 novel, Meg: A Novel of…

Actor Michelle Langstone Getting on with It

Actor Michelle Langstone Getting on with It

From McLeod’s Daughters to Power Rangers and Legend of the Seeker, Sydney-based New Zealander Michelle Langstone, 37, is a quiet achiever of television, according to the Daily Telegraph. Most recently, she’s one of the stars…

How Andrew Dominik Relayed Nick Cave’s Trauma

How Andrew Dominik Relayed Nick Cave’s Trauma

New Zealand-born director Andrew Dominik said he made the Nick Cave documentary One More Time With Feeling, expecting viewers to see it only once, and not many viewers at that. The new album by Nick…

Lyall Bay’s Unique Time Cinema For Sale

Lyall Bay’s Unique Time Cinema For Sale

Movie buff John Bell has decided to sell up one of Wellington’s best kept secrets: the Time Cinema in the suburb of Lyall Bay, a fully fledged 38-seat picture theatre where he lovingly screens…

Taika Waititi’s Creative Journey

Taika Waititi’s Creative Journey

”The vast majority of us lack the happy-go-lucky charm of New Zealand’s favourite writer/director,” writes Clarisse Loughrey for The Independent. She is talking about Taika Waititi, who currently is working on one of…

NZ the Way US Used to Be Says Robert Redford

NZ the Way US Used to Be Says Robert Redford

Hollywood film star Robert Redford, 80, came to New Zealand to expand his Oscar-winning résumé with children’s film Pete’s Dragon, but what he found was an idyllic paradise reminiscent of his own childhood. Redford says he felt…

Pietra Brettkelly’s A Flickering Truth Opens in NZ

Pietra Brettkelly’s A Flickering Truth Opens in NZ

When New Zealand-born director Pietra Brettkelly visited Afghanistan in 2012 she heard tell of a secret film archive, constructed during Taliban rule to protect the country’s old films from being destroyed by the regime….

Niki Caro Directing Anne of Green Gables Series

Niki Caro Directing Anne of Green Gables Series

Wellington-born filmmaker Niki Caro will direct the latest adaptation of the classic children’s novel Anne of Green Gables with production beginning in Canada this month. The series, Anne, may prove to be an edgier incarnation…

Fear the Walking Dead’s Michelle Ang Diversifies

Fear the Walking Dead’s Michelle Ang Diversifies

Christchurch-born actress Michelle Ang, 32, made her debut on the web series Fear the Walking Dead: Flight 462, earning an Emmy nomination for the role. This year, she’s trying her hand as a producer…

David Farrier Uncovers Surprise Turns in Tickled

David Farrier Uncovers Surprise Turns in Tickled

Squarely of the “truth is stranger than fiction” category, New Zealand journalist David Farrier’s debut documentary Tickled has touches about it of thriller, mystery, and true-crime genres – even, at times, horror, the Guardian’s…

Anna Paquin to Star in Margaret Atwood Adaptation

Anna Paquin to Star in Margaret Atwood Adaptation

True Blood and Roots star New Zealander Anna Paquin has been tapped to topline an adaptation of Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s novel Alias Grace, the Hollywood Reporter reports. Published in 1996, Alias Grace follows Grace…

Actor Rhys Darby Taking NZ Comedy to the World

Actor Rhys Darby Taking NZ Comedy to the World

New Zealander Rhys Darby is an actor slash writer slash stand-up slash globetrotting monster hunter. And if he’s not the only one, he’s certainly the busiest, according to Seth Simons writing for Paste Magazine. In…

Teeth and Tongue is So It Right Now

Teeth and Tongue is So It Right Now

Teeth & Tongue, the “cheeky moniker” of New Zealand-born Jess Cornelius, is one of 10 new artists “you need to know”, according to Rolling Stone, who recommend the musician to fans of Blondie, Kate…

Jon Beardmore Documents Odyssey Across Central Asia

Jon Beardmore Documents Odyssey Across Central Asia

New Zealand-born Jon Beardmore doesn’t like cricket – he loves it. So much so the London-based adventurer drove solo halfway across the planet, almost 50,000km, for a few overs in Afghanistan, an odyssey that…

NZ Transplant’s Book Being Adapted by Transparent TV Auteur

NZ Transplant’s Book Being Adapted by Transparent TV Auteur

One of the most compelling, influential, and controversial cult novels of the last 20 years, New Zealand transplant Chris Kraus’s I Love Dick, is coming soon to Amazon Prime in a TV adaptation spearheaded…

Hunt for the Wilderpeople Transcends Boundaries

Hunt for the Wilderpeople Transcends Boundaries

New Zealand “recently found its top native filmmaker in the unlikely form of 40-year-old comedian and actor Taika Waititi,” writes Ken Korman in a Hunt for the Wilderpeople review for The Gambit. “Hunt…

Ride With Pete’s Dragon in 360 Flyover Experience

Ride With Pete’s Dragon in 360 Flyover Experience

Walt Disney has given fans an opportunity to ride with Pete’s pet dragon Elliott (Pete’s Dragon) in a VR/360 experience that was created with the help of Air New Zealand, Nokia; Tourism New Zealand…

Rhys Darby Gets Wrecked

Rhys Darby Gets Wrecked

Rhys Darby is keeping busy. When IndieWire got the Aucklander on the phone, he was in Vancouver filming an unspecified role in the upcoming series adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events. It was…

DJ Zane Lowe Queues Up His Summer Faves

DJ Zane Lowe Queues Up His Summer Faves

From a moody duet to a Mac Miller joyful four-on-the-floor groove, Auckland-born DJ, producer and poptimist Zane Lowe shares the songs he’s got queued up this summer for the Guardian’s regular column, The Playlist. Lowe,…