By Andrew Dalton, Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --Americans will soon learn there are more creatures in New Zealand than just hobbits.
Thanks to the expanding cinematic universe of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, the list now includes vampires, werewolves, zombies, disco-era ghosts and projectile-vomiting demons.
The "Flight of the Conchords" star Clement and the "Thor: Ragnarok" director Waititi co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred in the 2014 film about a group of New Zealand vampire housemates, "What We Do in the Shadows," and co-created the U.S. TV series of the same name on FX.
Now, they're bringing their New Zealand TV show, "Wellington Paranormal," to the U.S. with a premiere on The CW on Sunday.
A comic mockumentary with echoes of "Cops" and "The X Files," "Wellington Paranormal" follows a pair of uniformed police officers, played by Mike Minogue and Karen O'Leary, in the title city as they investigate monstrous happenings with bureaucratic banality.
"The way that the characters react to things are quite New Zealand, the way that people either are understated or they don't know what to do," Clement said with a laugh in an interview with The Associated Press via Zoom from Wellington.
The show is a spinoff of the "What We Do in the Shadows" film, with Minogue and O'Leary reprising their roles.
But unlike the New York-set "Shadows" TV series, which was made for an American audience, U.S. viewers will see the same episodes that first aired in 2018 in New Zealand, where the show's third season just aired and the fourth is in production.
Clement isn't worried about the jokes getting lost between hemispheres.
"We try to cram it with jokes so that you won't really notice if you don't get a specific cultural reference," he said.
A more significant difference may be the countries' police cultures, and the prevailing attitudes around them.
"I know that this comes at an odd time for America and the image of police in America," Clement said. "There's a different feeling around the police here. There's some crossover and some of the same issues, but because they don't carry guns, there is not the fear of the police."
And some of the jokes might play a little differently in 2021 after major U.S. protests of police violence than they did in 2018 when the first season of "Wellington Paranormal" was made.
In one episode, Minogue has blood all over his police uniform after trying to empty a pint into an evidence bag.
"I didn't brutalize anybody!" he feels the need to tell the people who see him.
"There's a few jokes like that that we did three years ago that I wonder if we could make today, because it's changed so quickly," Clement said. "I hope people still find that funny, but it feels more probably on the nose than it was at the time."
It was an easy call for Clement and Waititi to give these characters their own show, and to have O'Leary and Minogue play them, though both were basically beginners when they appeared in "What We Do in the Shadows." Their gifts for comedy, and for the improv that "Wellington Paranormal" relies on, were clear.
"We just put them together and instantly they had a chemistry like a great comedy duo, and we were just lucky," Clement said.
He and Waititi had a hard time keeping it together when they watched the two in the monitors as they directed the film, and an even harder time acting alongside them.
"You can see it in the movie if you watch the scenes where they're on and we're on, Clement said. "We're all hiding our faces and scratching our noses, covering our smiles."
SCHROM x Yacht Club and Be Electric Studios Launch Electric XR for Virtual Production
SCHROM x Yacht Club, a full-service live-action, tabletop, and postproduction company, has teamed with Be Electric Studios, a soundstage, equipment rental, and virtual production company, to launch Electric XR, a virtual production collective.
Industry veteran Thomas Rossano will lead the new venture, which provides advanced virtual production solutions across multiple facilities. He brings over 25 years of experience in live-action, tabletop, postproduction and talent curation to enhance Electric XR’s offerings as a resource for brands and agencies, as well as other production companies in need of virtual production solutions. Additionally Rossano continues to serve as EP at XR New York (XR-NY), a role he’s held since December 2022. SCHROM x Yacht Club originally established XR-NY to help provide XR services for third-party rentals. While XR-NY will continue to function independently for SCHROM X Yacht Club, it now operates under the Electric XR umbrella.
Rossano’s expertise spans producing live-action commercials, branded content, interactive and experiential content. In addition to leading Electric XR, he holds responsibilities at SCHROM x Yacht Club which include driving business development, collaborating with sales reps and expanding the company’s creative talent network. Rossano’s career includes serving as an exec producer at Hungry Man for about 11 years, right from that company’s inception. He then went on to become a partner at Station Film where he also had a lengthy tenure. Later he was a partner at PRISM. Then after the pandemic hit, he became a freelance EP for nearly two years, looking into opportunities in virtual production, which led him to XR NY and now Electric XR. Over the years, he has produced high-profile... Read More