New Zealand scenery takes viewers back to 10,000 BC
11 Mar 2008
Movie goers are taking a journey back to the Ice Age, with the help of New Zealand’s mountainous scenery.
The new Hollywood blockbuster, 10,000 BC, contains key scenes filmed in the Southern Alps of New Zealand’s South Island.
Director Roland Emmerich has been blown away by the country’s scenery, describing it as ‘magical’.
The director of blockbusters including Independence Day, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow, initially anticipated filming only one aerial shot in New Zealand. However, when the location scouts took him up in a helicopter over the Southern Alps, 55km from Queenstown, he changed his mind.
''I said 'Oh my God'!,'' Emmerich recalled the first time he saw the location.
''It was eight weeks before the shoot, we had already started preparing in the Trackensburg Mountains in South Africa, but I had to call Warner Bros and say 'We have to shoot in New Zealand instead'.
''I flew to Los Angeles and showed them some pictures and they said 'Yes, we have to shoot there'.''
Months before the location scouting trip to New Zealand, Emmerich visualised the setting and had artists draw a mountain backdrop.
''I told the location scouts you have to find me a location that has a 250km radius of mountains,'' says Emmerich.
''[It] was exactly like the landscape we had drawn up.''
The prehistory story is set in the Africa mountains where a small tribe is attacked by slave traders. The film then follows four male survivors who chase the attackers, leading to a journey from the mountains, through rainforests to desert regions.
However, despite the impressive backdrop, there was no escaping the extreme weather conditions.
Filming required the actors to be bare-chested and wear little more than loin cloths in below zero temperatures and blizzards.
''We had to focus so hard to not let our teeth chatter in the cold while we were shooting a scene,'' says American actor Steven Strait.
The hard work has paid off with the film taking out first-place at the box office after opening internationally over the weekend. So far, the movie has grossed an estimated $25.3 million from 3,600 screens for a worldwide gross of $61 million.
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