A new wave of big-budget productions has turned New Zealand into one of the busiest film sets on earth, and the locations involved read like a greatest-hits tour of the country. Brad Pitt's survival film Heart of the Beast leaned hard on the South Island, with Queenstown Hill, Glenorchy, Paradise and the Dart River standing in for wilderness, Lake Wakatipu and Lake Sylvan handling lakeside scenes, and Milford Sound plus Lake Gunn featuring in the pivotal plane crash sequence. Filming even included spots like Chinaman's Bluff and the Routeburn Valley — the kind of places trampers already rave about. One unlikely breakout star: Uber, a Kiwi dog who plays Odin alongside Pitt.
Netflix's adaptation of Steinbeck's East of Eden, starring Florence Pugh, went even wider. Ōamaru's Victorian Precinct doubled as 20th-century Salinas Valley, California, with Tyne St and the Criterion Hotel on screen, while Dunedin's grand 1937 former Chief Post Office, Queens Gardens and the Railway Station appeared in episode two. The Trask family farm was the Maniototo and Hawkdun Foothills in Central Otago, and Auckland's Cheltenham and Devonport streets were gravelled over to mimic Californian avenues.
Taika Waititi's Klara and the Sun, based on the Kazuo Ishiguro novel, built a striking orange-and-green house set on a Wānaka hilltop and shot landscape scenes across Central Otago, with Auckland's High St and Chancery St closed for city exteriors.
And there's more on the way. A Minecraft Movie Squared wrapped filming in Huntly — again playing fictional Chuglass, Idaho, its power station recast as a potato-chip factory — with Thames, Grahamstown and Northland expected to feature in the 2027 release. Netflix's first original scripted drama commissioned in New Zealand, tellingly titled Queenstown, has been filming around Jack's Point with Rufus Sewell and Frances O'Connor. Wellington is busy too: Andy Serkis started directing and starring in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum there in July, with Hobbiton in Matamata closing for filming and a Nintendo video game adaptation also shooting largely at Wellington's Stone Street Studios. An Evil Dead prequel was shot around Auckland.
For travellers, this is basically a forecast of where crowds will go next. It also works as a ready-made itinerary: a South Island loop through Ōamaru, Dunedin, Central Otago and Queenstown covers East of Eden, Heart of the Beast and Klara and the Sun in one road trip, while North Island stops at Devonport, Huntly, Matamata and Wellington cover the rest. Expect some of these spots — especially Glenorchy, Paradise and Hobbiton — to get busier as the films land. Going now means seeing them before the tour buses catch up.
