THE $1.6M PAV WELLYWOOD’S SHOCK KIWI CASH GRAB
Matt Nippert explores what links pavs, Thunderbirds and the Kiwi film industry.
International film and television producers have been paid bonuses by the Government for shoehorning “corny” New Zealand references into their scripts, resulting in a pavlovabaking Power Ranger and an offer by Sir Richard Taylor to relocate the secret island base of the Thunderbirds to the Kermadecs.
The payments included $1.6 million paid to producers of TV show Power Rangers in return for references including a Kiwi-born character spending an entire episode trying to bake a pavlova.
Another episode of the children’s show featured a homegrown boy band —the N-Zed Boys — who sang lyrics such as “I’ll build a city of love in the skies for two”.
The payments and promises, from a pool of taxpayer support for film-makers that has deepened and broadened since Lord of the
Rings in the late 1990s, have been uncovered in Inside Wellywood, a Herald investigation exploring the nexus between the Wellington-dominated film industry and the Beehive.
The Power Rangers series in question was produced in 2016 and initially qualified for a 20 per cent subsidy (worth $6.5m) but the New Zealand Film Commission approved an additional 5 per cent uplift ($1.6m), believing the references represented “significant economic benefits”.
NZFC head of marketing Jasmin McSweeney said the series had “more than 20 references to New Zealand in total”. A YouTube compilation has 103 Kiwi references, mostly passing, including two Auckland episodes, exposure worth more than $5.3m.
Asked about the pavlova, Grant Robertson, Finance Minister and Associate Arts and Culture Minister, said: “What I would note is that the criteria for the uplift has been tightened in recent years.”
Despite the NZFC’s defence, McSweeney noted eligibility for the bonus payments had been tightened in 2017 and Power Rangers no longer qualified. Other producers seeking funding by promising to localise their international stories included Weta Workshop’s co-founder Sir Richard, who complained to then arts minister Chris Finlayson in June 2013 about an inability for his Pukeko Pictures to access taxpayer funding for Thunderbirds — despite offers to relocate Tracy Island to Raoul Island and make one puppet a New Zealander.
Even Finlayson, Minister for
“The pavlova episode is really corny — and I’m happy to be quoted on that”.
Chris Finlayson
Culture and Heritage 2008-14, wasn’t willing to defend the policy and describes the pavlova episode as “really corny — and I’m happy to be quoted on that”.
Finlayson said there was a “world of difference” between supporting genuine local content on the screen — citing Boy and Mt Zion — and the “forced shoehorning” dug up by the investigation.
Finlayson was a fan of Thunderbirds in his youth, but it was clearly not about New Zealand. “We have plenty of good stories to tell — you don’t have to have a Māori princess playing Lady Penelope.”
Finlayson wrote to Taylor to say: “I cannot intervene directly in funding decisions”, but signalled Cabinet was considering moves that would “address a number of concerns raised in your email”.
A subsequently announced policy change broadened access of television producers to the large budget screen production fund — originally created to attract largescale Hollywood film productions — and Thunderbirds got $2.9m in taxpayer funding, with no strings attached, and the proposed New Zealand elements were scrapped.
Pukeko Pictures’ Clive Spink said: “We proposed certain New Zealand elements to the story but despite our best efforts, we weren’t able to meet all the criteria of the application and thus resulted in some of the planned New Zealand elements not being included.”
Taylor, who declined to be interviewed, defended his actions.
“Some might think I have possible influence over government policy. The reality is significantly less exciting and in fact this is the first and only time I have written to a minister on [a] decision to do with grants that I can recall.”
Taylor said, “There is great reason for us to be proud of [Thunderbirds] as it has brought significant benefits to the Wellington and New Zealand screen industry including jobs for an average of 50 screen technicians over the past five years.”
Briefing notes to Finlayson obtained under the Official Information Act show Taylor wrote to Finlayson one day after the NZFC rejected Thunderbirds funding because Taylor’s concessions were not deemed sufficient to make the story distinctly Kiwi.
The commission wrote: “It would be very difficult for viewers to accept Tracy Island as anything but a mysterious island in the South Pacific and it would still be referred to as Tracy Island throughout the series — furthermore, there were no reference to NZ or Raoul Island in the script provided.”