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Hollywood came to Mahurangi this month as the NZ shoot for multi-million dollar movie The Wrecking Crew, starring Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista, descended on Martins Bay for more than two weeks.
Dozens of trucks, trailers and marquees took over the reserve and holiday park to form the film unit base, with more than 500 crew and cast either staying locally or being bussed in daily.
As well as trailers and marquees to house the stars and extras, there were trucks for catering, wardrobe, make-up, hair, production, lighting and stunt crews.
Another 25 trucks and trailers, plus generators and a 250-tonne crane for lighting were sited nearby to serve the set location, a clifftop property that will double as the home of the movie’s bad guy (Claes Bang) in the Amazon MGM Studios buddy cop action comedy.
The sheer scale of the operation meant that local accommodation was booked out, including a luxury vineyard villa near Matakana for the two main stars, and the underground carpark at Snells Beach had to be hired for ancillary parking.
Supervising location manager Clayton Tikau said local residents had been incredibly accommodating and welcoming, considering the equivalent of a new small town had moved in overnight.
“We have a big impact on the community and require a little patience and buy-in, but we hope people realise it’s a good thing and it employs a lot of people,” he said. “It’s quite a circus, but we work hard to leave no footprint and want to leave everything as good, if not better than before.”
Tikau said that the 300-strong crew was 95 per cent Kiwi and everything they could was bought or hired locally.
“This is a really professional crew, it’s a blessing to be with them,” he said. “We really try when we come to Mahurangi or Warkworth to buy from here, so local people see the benefit. We put tabs in with local businesses, buy water from a local supplier; all the money we can is being spent here.”
Martins Bay Holiday Park manager Tony Sharp said the campground had done very well from The Wrecking Crew using its accommodation and grounds for the unit base.
“It’s been great. It was a fairly last-minute thing when they found the house they wanted to use, but they’ve been so accommodating and the feedback we’ve had was that they loved the place.”
Location manager Jordi Scott-Smith said they had worked to keep local residents informed throughout and everyone had been great.
“We’ve had nothing but positive feedback from everybody,” he said.
After a couple of night shoots last week, including a number of stunts and gun battles, filming finished at Martins Bay in the early hours of Thursday, November 21. It will take up to a week for the crew to fully pack down and move out.
Tikau said that while the crew had been disappointed not to be able to film in the Johnstones Hill Tunnels (MM, Sep 16), they had managed to work around that by using a race track, and were pleased to have found the Martins Bay set after that.
“It’s such a beautiful area, we all love it,” he said.
US producers Rob Cowan, Lynn Harris and Jeff Fierson agreed, saying Mahurangi was a beautiful location for filming the movie, which is set in Hawaii.
“Our experience in the area has been exceptional,” they said. “The local people and businesses have been so supportive and even the weather came to the party.”
The lengths to which the crew went included laying a new floor on top of the existing floor in the set property, to ensure they didn’t damage the original, and constructing a new metal road so the almost-constant traffic to and from the set could run on a one-way loop.
The movie is likely to be released in around a year’s time.
