Latest news with #NewZealand-produced
NZ Herald
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Media Insider: Taxpayer-funded Jacinda Ardern movie ‘Mania' scrapped
The New Zealand-produced film, titled Mania, had been originally expected to go head-to-head this year with the New Zealand/US-produced and Ardern-backed Prime Minister movie. Mania producer Emma Slade, of Auckland-based Firefly Films, confirmed on Wednesday that the film had been scrapped. 'Once we heard that another project was underway and further advanced than we were, we decided not to pursue the project further,' Slade said in a brief email response to a list of questions. Former NZ Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern. Media Insider revealed in March last year that the NZ Film Commission board had agreed to $800,000 in taxpayer funding for Mania. The film would likely have received a further $1.2 million in public support through the Government's screen production rebate. According to a synopsis provided by the NZFC at the time, the documentary would explore the 'mania' that propelled Ardern's rise as a young political leader and how that 'later collided with a backlash of hate'. The movie was neither authorised nor endorsed by Ardern, who threw her support instead behind Prime Minister. 'The producers have not sought or used Film Commission funding and that was important to me.' Nevertheless, Mania had received 'significant foreign investment and international interest', NZFC chief executive Annie Murray said earlier last year. At that stage, film bosses did not seem worried about two Ardern movies potentially being in the market at the same time. '[Production company] Madison Wells appear to be doing an authorised biopic on Dame Jacinda Ardern's political career, while the independent Mania documentary explores quite different social and political issues in New Zealand society arising out of her tenure as Prime Minister,' said Murray last June. 'It will be good for the NZ viewing public to have the contrasting stories available at about the same time. Each work will likely benefit from this as well. 'The success of Mania is not undermined by the Madison Wells' doco; NZFC is not reviewing funding and we remain confident that it can proceed as planned.' Prime Minister, which featured at the Sundance festival in January, opened in the US last month and will feature at the NZ International Film Festival in Auckland on August 2 and in Wellington on August 16. The movie Prime Minister featured at the Sundance festival in January - in attendance, from left, Gigi Pritzker, Clarke Gayford, Lindsay Utz, Dame Jacinda Ardern, Michelle Walshe and Rachel Shane. Photo / Getty It has been produced by New Zealand's Dark Doris and American firms Madison Wells and Divergent Pictures. It has been produced with Ardern's full support, including interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. The NZFC issued a statement last December saying it was delighted Prime Minister had been accepted at Sundance. In a footnote to that press release, the commission said the producers of Mania had 'informed the Film Commission that the production is on an indefinite pause, and no Film Commission funding has been drawn down'. Murray told this week's Media Insider podcast that taxpayer money committed to projects had a deadline. Producers would have to reapply for any funding should they want to resurrect the Ardern project. 'I think the fact that this new film has come out now... that would be a factor that we would take into account,' said Murray. 'But we'd have to look at it on its merits like we do with any other funding decision.' Original distributor pulled out The film was promoted at Cannes in 2023, with Auckland-based Ahi Films listed as the distributor in marketing materials. Ahi later withdrew from the project. Last July, Murray said a new distributor was now attached, but neither she nor Slade would disclose their name. 'It is not unusual for market partners to change,' said Murray at the time. 'The Film Commission is not party to the commercial negotiations between producers and distributors, but we do require producers to have a distribution partner as a condition of funding. 'The name of that distributor remains confidential for now for commercial reasons.' She said when commercial negotiations were complete, the distributors would make an announcement. Slade said at the time: 'We are currently focused on making the film. There is no need for them to be named at this stage.' Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand's most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME. Watch Media Insider - The Podcast on YouTube, or listen to it on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Otago Daily Times
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Digital whodunnit for the TikTok generation
A New Zealand-produced, 18-part series shines the spotlight on the dangers and growing epidemic of image-based abuse and bullying. The Sender is about a group of prefects who have a final night of debauchery at a bach before taking on their roles and responsibilities in their final year of school. But as the night unravels, anonymous messages hit their phones with secrets and scandals threatening their carefully crafted personas. The series has been shot specifically for social media with the 18 episodes dropping on Instagram and TikTok. The aim was to make a series that resonated with a Gen Z audience, producer Jessica Todd told Culture 101 and getting to grips with that demographic's slang was part of the research process, she says. 'Whilst like Gen Z obviously speak very differently to millennials and everybody else, I think it's also important to remember they're just smart audiences like the rest of us. 'And so from the baseline of starting to write and think about the storyline and think about how we wanted it to sound, we were like, okay, it really needs to sound authentic to Gen Z, and we are not Gen Z, so we're going to need to do a bit of research and figure that out and become acclimatised with the lingo and what's cool and what's not.' Ultimately the story had to be strong enough to carry any audience, she says. 'It's just like any other project. It was just research and connecting with the actual audience and I think also just not pushing it too far out, like I feel some other shows that are trying to connect with a certain audience maybe go too far into the slang or vernacular. 'And we were like, it also just needs to be funny and good.' The fact The Sender is a digital only production presented its own challenges, director Liv McClymont says. 'Gen Z are watching all of their content on platforms like Tiktok, Instagram reels and YouTube shorts, and they're all vertical platforms. 'So we have to write for those specific platforms and what they will allow us to do, because they can be quite restrictive about what we can show, there's certain things that you just cannot put on social media, I think blood, for instance, that is a big no-no.' It also had to be shot in portrait mode, she says. 'We have six lead cast members and how are we going to fit all of them in one frame? It feels impossible, but we managed to do it with some very tricky blocking.' Getting depth in each shot also required some deft framing, she says. 'We wanted to make sure that we had as much depth in every frame so that we could make it feel cinematic, even though we were in this portrait mode.' Often the characters had to be stacked in unusual configurations to get them in shot, she says. 'We get two people sitting on the couch, and then another two people sitting behind them further back on the couch, and then another person standing behind the couch, and then all of a sudden, we've somehow, through height and dimension, got five people in one frame.' The plotting had to be tight to engage with an audience whose attentions needs to be captured quickly, Todd says. 'We knew that we had to start every single episode with something punchy or interesting or absurd or dramatic, and end every episode with hopefully a decent enough cliffhanger to make you want to scroll onto the next one.' The feedback has been positive, she says. 'They're really loving it, and I think are excited that there's a show for them that speaks to the world they live in, the issues that they're going through.'
