Local film’s streaming beam
Northspur writer Justin Eade says the film’s response could foreshadow budgets for larger, local feature films. Photo: Matt Squire.
A feature film with Nelson cast and crew, and scenes captured in the Whangamoas, is set to roll out more highlights.
Northspur, described by its Nelsonian writer Justin Eade as an “action film with deeper meaning”, intends to bolster its worldwide adulation with releases on Google Play, YouTube, iTunes and Prime Video Direct in New Zealand and Australia on 10 October.
The day will also deliver the film to several more countries, comprising a combined population of more than 1.2 billion people.
It will also screen at the Suter Theatre in Nelson on 3 October and 7 October as part of the Top of the South Film Festival.
The first screening also featuring a Q&A session with the cast and crew.
Since the film’s completion in 2021, North American rights were secured by Hollywood Studio Lionsgate in 2022, and from 2023 it was released in the UK, South Korea, German-speaking territories, the Commonwealth of Independent States and on long haul Air New Zealand flights.
Justin Eade says, although the film, made with a tiny $200k budget, was primarily shot in Marlborough, many of the opening scenes capture the Whangamoas from a drone, and its Nelson-based cast and crew came from previous local plays and short films.
He hopes the film’s viewership through the streaming platforms is a blockbuster and leaves audiences thinking about compassion and loss.
“It centres around a couple that has managed to avoid the carnage of society that’s gone a bit feral, and they’re up in a secluded valley trying to stay away from all the nasty people that are starting to intrude onto their property and take what they have,” he says.
“There’s a pathogen spreading, and everyone’s looking for these drugs so they don’t die from this pathogen and the wife gets infected with it and has a week to live, so [the husband] has to go out and find the drugs to keep her alive.
“He meets this really gnarly old guy that basically shoots everything that moves and has no compassion, and the film is really about the two of them coming together for a common goal and they learn from each other.”
Justin says filming took place in 2019 before post-production during the Covid-19 period.
He also hopes Northspur will foreshadow larger film budgets for more local feature films that he’s written, including one that depicts the 1866 Maungatapu murders.