The brainchild of Screentime CEO Philly de Lacey, about 150 cast and crew set up camp in the resort in March to film A Remarkable Place to Die — they’re due to wrap on June 18, by which time they’ll have shot for over 70 days.
She tells Mountain Scene they’ve already got the cuts of the first two of four 90-minute episodes, and says they’re "stunning".
"We have loved Queenstown. We’ve captured every season, it’s been absolutely stunning, and everyone here’s just been so amazing to us — everyone we’ve reached out to, ‘can we do something in your backyard’, and they’re like, ‘yeah, sure’.
"It’s been absolutely phenomenal ..... we’ve felt pretty special."
That’s come at an expense, she notes, but it’s been worth it for the locations.
"It’s like a beautiful film set everywhere you look, it just couldn’t be prettier, so we feel pretty spoilt to set the show here."
As soon as filming wraps, De Lacey says they’re going straight into a writers’ room to start work on the potential season two — "we’ve got lots of ideas about how we’re going to kill people in different weird and wonderful ways".
"We’ve had a phenomenal response from our broadcasters for the two cuts that we’ve done — they’ve been really blown away, actually — so if the audience reacts in the same way, then hopefully we’ve got a hit on our hands."
The series stars Chelsie Preston Crayford (detective Anais Mallory), Rebecca Gibney, who plays her mum, and Charles Jazz Terrier, Anais’ ex-fiance who is now married to her ex-best friend, played by Indiana Evans.
It’s an international co-production with Germany’s Real Film Berlin in association with Britain’s Banjay Rights, which will handle global distribution.
It’ll air across Germany, the United States and New Zealand.
And they’re not mucking around when it comes to screening, either.
De Lacey expects the series to hit NZ screens "before the end of this year".
