A Dunedin-made zombie film is poised for a splattering of success overseas. Tim Miller and Jonathan Chilton-Towle report.
Dunedin could soon be ground zero for the living dead and their fans.
A Dunedin-made zombie film has been sold to international distributors - opening the door to a new world of promotion possibilities even before it is finished.
I Survived a Zombie Holocaust was taken to the Cannes film festival in France, where it was picked up by film distributors from Germany and Canada.
The film features many Dunedin landmarks, including King Edward St in South Dunedin.
During filming, the street was closed so that hundreds of zombie-like locals could shuffle down the street. As of last night, the film's trailer had been viewed more than 670,000 times on YouTube.
The film's Dunedin-based producer, Zoe Hobson, said everyone involved with the film was ecstatic it was bound for foreign audiences.
There was a chance the movie would also be picked up by United States interests, she said.
The film's France-based executive producer, Gallien Chanalet-Quercy, took the movie to Cannes after being approached by distributors, Mrs Hobson said.
''It's been a really long road for us so to have the film sold before it is even fully finished and at the first festival we went to is great.''
Mrs Hobson did not want to say which companies had bought the rights to the film but hoped the deals would pay off for the crew.
''For all the hard work that was put in I really do hope there is some benefit for the core crew who have worked really hard on the film.''
If the film was successful, Dunedin could be seen as an ideal location for film-makers, she said.
''Even though it is only small there are a lot of really skilled and creative people here . . . I don't think we could have made this anywhere else.''
Despite the film already being sold, it still needed to be finished, with visual effects such as blood splatter still to be added, Mrs Hobson said.
Zombie tourism has become a popular attraction, with fans of the zombie genre flocking to locations where zombie films and television shows have been made. The small town of Senioa in the United States saw business boom after the popular television show The Walking Dead was filmed there.
Tourism Dunedin chief executive Hamish Saxton said it remained to be seen whether the film would make Dunedin a mecca for zombie aficionados.
There was a market for zombie movies and a potential for fans to want to come to see the location where a movie was shot, but that depended entirely on the film, he said.
''We would need to wait until the fans discovered the part Dunedin played in the film,'' Mr Saxton said.
Big films such as The Sound of Music and The Hobbit were famous for their iconic scenery and had contributed to their local tourism industries.
Dunedin had benefited in the past from the Scarfies film, which had portrayed the city as a student destination.
More recently, the film Two Little Boys raised the international profile of Southland and especially the Catlins, Mr Saxton said.
