New Zealand’s health and safety production protocols have been endorsed by the national government, we can reveal, meaning production can restart in the country after it was halted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Some film and TV shoots “are already safely underway,” the New Zealand Film Commission has confirmed to us. This potentially paves the way for the country’s highest-profile productions, James Cameron’s Avatar sequels and Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings series, to get back underway in coming months.
Cameron and producer Jon Landau were filming live-action elements of the big-budget sequels when the pandemic struck. Since then, they have continued to work on the film’s virtual production in California and with Weta Digital on the visual effects.