News

Once Were Warriors, the classic New Zealand novel that unflinchingly depicted modern Māori life, is coming to TV. The novel was previously adapted into an acclaimed movie in 1994. Deadline reports that producer Rick Selvage and Alan Duff, the author of Once Were Warriors, are producing a new adaptation of the 1990 novel that brings the story thirty years into the future, and will feature a new generation of characters and stories.

Exclusive: Classic New Zealand novel Once Were Warriors, memorably adapted for film by Lee Tamahori in 1994, is getting a TV adaptation from Wheel Of Time exec Rick Selvage and the novel’s author Alan Duff.

A companion novel penned by Duff called Once Were Warriors: Generations is also being lined up.

Duff is teaming with Onphaya’s Selvage and the latter’s producing partner, Peta Johnson, who will both serve as executive producers.

In the original novel and film a family descended from Māori warriors is bedeviled by a violent father and the societal problems of being treated as outcasts.

Once Were Warriors: Generations will bring the Heke family forward 30 years to the present day with a new generation of characters and stories.

According to producers, “political aspirations, financial schemes, cultural clashes, and a search for redemption are at the core of this series filtered through the distinctive Māori culture...

Rena Owen.

When Rena Owen weighs up whether to accept roles, her main goal is to portray characters who are not the same as or similar to those she’s played before.

That maxim has served the Kiwi actress well in a screen career which spans 30 years since her debut in the Nz police series Shark in the Park.

Currently she is in Hobart playing yet another unique individual – Grace, who runs a community drop-in centre for wayward kids – in The Gloaming, an eight-part drama commissioned by Stan and Disney’s ABC Studios International.

Owen was in Vancouver getting ready to shoot the final episode of the second season of mermaid drama Siren, which screens on Disney’s young-adult Us cable network Freeform, when she was asked to audition for The Gloaming.

Her schedule was so hectic her initial response was that she had no time to do a self-test.

Dramas don't come more powerful than this one -- a Maori family might escape their slum existence if it weren't for the father, an emotionally volatile monster whose brutality knows no limits. The show took in awards everywhere -- it's a stunningly affecting tragedy not completely without hope. Once Were Warriors Blu-ray Film Movement Classics 1994 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 102 min. / Street Date September 6, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Rena Owen, Temuera Morrison, Mamaengaroa Kerr-Bell, Julian Arahanga, Taungaroa Emile, Rachael Morris Jr., Joseph Kairau, Cliff Curtis, Pete Smith. Cinematography Stuart Dryburgh Film Editor Michael Horton Original Music Murray Grindlay, Murray McNabb Written by Riwa Brown from the novel by Alan Duff Produced by Robin Scholes Directed by Lee Tamahori

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

In 1996 or so, working at MGM, I learned about a movie coming out with a definite neo-noir theme -- Mulholland Falls. Then I was told that its director was a New Zealander whose...