In 2000, Taiwanese-born director Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a hit with both audiences and critics, earning four Academy Awards, including Best Foreign Film. Fourteen years later, the set for the much-anticipated sequel, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon II: The Green Legend, shooting in New Zealand, narrowly escaped being reduced to ashes.

Lady White Snake narrowly missed becoming the first official New Zealand–Taiwan 3D blockbuster co-production. Shown here are storyboards for the film from Tainan National University of the Arts professor Yu Wei-cheng.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon II (CTHD2) is an American–Chinese co-production helmed by director and renowned fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, featuring Donnie Yen as the male protagonist Silent Wolf and Michelle Yeoh reprising her role as Yu Shu-lien. The film began shooting in New Zealand in June 2014, starting at Auckland Film Studios.

The Auckland Film Studios, run by Auckland Council, have recently played host to a number of major international films, including The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, headed up by New Zealand director Andrew Adamson, and British director Peter Webber’s Emperor.

Early in the morning of July 31, 2014, a prop warehouse being used for CTHD2 burst into flames. While the production lost several assets, the fire was quickly brought under control and the crew took it in stride, continuing shooting as scheduled.

After the fire, film-industry heavyweight and CTHD2 producer Harvey Weinstein flew from the US to New Zealand to check on the film’s progress. Speaking to the media, Weinstein was effusive in his praise of both New Zealand’s scenery and the Auckland Film Studios set.

People in the film industry, the CTHD2 team included, have repeatedly lauded New Zealand as a filming destination not only for its breathtaking natural scenery, but also for the skilled make-up, prop-making, special effects, and postproduction staff available.

Such strengths have led to Auckland and Wellington, both located in the country’s North Island, becoming major locations for the film industry, which has had flow-on effects both economically and culturally.

Lady White Snake narrowly missed becoming the first official New Zealand–Taiwan 3D blockbuster co-production. Shown here are storyboards for the film from Tainan National University of the Arts professor Yu Wei-cheng.

According to 2013 statistics from the New Zealand government, the country is home to some 3,000 film-related businesses, with over 2,500 of these located in Auckland or Wellington.

Auckland has a particular edge in production, with some 60% of the country’s production companies based there. Wellington, meanwhile, is home to 942 postproduction businesses, including the world-renowned team behind the effects in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, the Peter Jackson co-founded Weta Digital.

As of 2013, the film industry had reached such a scale that this country of just 4.5 million people had been the shooting location for over 40 films and had collected total revenues of just over NZ$1.4 billion (approx. NT$35 billion). In fact, of ­every $1,000 of GDP, $7 comes from the film industry.

Beginning in 2015, several major international productions are set to begin shooting and production in New Zealand, including James Cameron’s three Avatar sequels and Disney’s remake of the 1977 film Pete’s Dragon. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon II, meanwhile, wrapped in October 2014. According to conservative estimates from the New Zealand government, over 150 feature films have been shot in the country since 1977.

Peter Jackson once commented that New Zealand isn’t a small country, it’s a large village. To him, New Zealand has been a place he can pursue his cinematic dreams. Through film, the nation has gone from being on the margins of global society to part of the center.

And for Taiwan, the establishment of joint film projects facilitated by the ANZTEC agreement will help bring this island nation closer to this “Middle Earth” of cinema.

Movies have created new tourism opportunities for New Zealand, with LotR and The Hobbit fans flocking to attractions like the Weta Cave to see their favorite characters and locations.

However, even well before ANZTEC, Taiwan and New Zealand were set to embark on a joint cinematic venture, although ultimately nothing came of the plans.

The year was 2003, and Peter Jackson’s third Lord of the Rings film, The Return of the King, reignited Tolkien fever, collecting some US$1.1 billion in box-office takings and becoming that year’s biggest movie. It was a banner year for the New Zealand film industry, with not only Jackson’s film, but also the sixth-highest-grossing film of the year, Tom Cruise vehicle The Last Samurai, also shot in the country, with spectacular Mt. Ta­ra­naki featuring throughout.

Taiwanese folk singer and New Zealand citizen Hou Te-­chien (Hou De­jian), best known for his 1978 song “Descendants of the Dragon,” had spent several years learning about digital media, and following the success of The Fellowship of the Ring, decided in 2003 to try his hand at cinematic 3D effects. His first goal was to combine modern Western technology with an ancient Chinese tale—“Legend of the White Snake.”

In July 2004 he brought his plan for an English-language 3D animated adaptation of the tale to Taiwan, and held a press conference announcing his cooperation with two New Zealand film companies, the production house Silverscreen (which disbanded in 2007) and Oktobor Animation, an effects company that had worked on the Lord of the Rings films.

With a projected budget of US$40 million (approx. NT$1.3 billion) split between Taiwan and New Zealand, the film attracted significant interest from both governments, with the ROC’s Government Information Office and Ministry of Economic Affairs ready to promote the film as a flagship for investment in digital content in Taiwan.

Yu Wei-­cheng, friend of Hou and professor in the Graduate Institute of Animation and Film Art at Tai­nan National University of the Arts, was also involved in developing the visual aspects of the film, helping Hou storyboard some of its major scenes.

In an interview with Taiwan Panorama, Yu remarked that locations had already been chosen, with Ta­ra­naki, which had stood in for Japan in The Last Samurai, ready to be transformed into Hang­zhou’s West Lake. A climactic battle was also set to be shot in the massive wave pool at the Auckland Film Studios. The New Zealand side, Yu says, had already recommended two big-name Hollywood directors to Hou, including New Zealand director Roger Donaldson, fresh from filming Cuban Missile Crisis drama Thirteen Days.

For the role of the Buddhist monk Fa­hai, the New Zealand side was initially set on securing the services of Sir Ian McKellen, but ultimately chose to offer the role to Sir Anthony Hopkins. For the white snake spirit, both sides agreed to cast ­Zhang Ziyi, while for Xu Xian, the number-one choice was Ta­ke­shi Ka­ne­shiro.

With everything lined up for a 2006 start on shooting, the last thing that remained was financing. “The Taiwanese venture capital company had agreed to help out, no problem, but the funds never came through,” says Yu. The main reason, Yu conjectures, is that the ROC government still had reservations about being a joint investor in a 3D feature film. “And we were so close to getting started,” sighs Yu.

And thus the potential first cinematic cooperation between Taiwan and New Zealand fizzled out, never to be.

Lady White Snake narrowly missed becoming the first official New Zealand–Taiwan 3D blockbuster co-production. Shown here are storyboards for the film from Tainan National University of the Arts professor Yu Wei-cheng.

After plans for Lady White Snake fell through, with the assistance of then-head of the New Zealand Commerce and Industry Office Clare Fearnley, Yu set his sights on a smaller project—a science-fiction/romance film entitled Time Hunter. Another Taiwan–New Zealand joint venture, this new film would have more modest budget of US$6 million.

Time Hunter was a concept Yu had been working on for several years, intended to be a fully digital English-language film adaptation of ­Chang Shi-kuo’s short story Nocturne. While the original was set in the Qing­tian Street area of Tai­pei in the 1960s, Yu’s adaptation moved the setting to 1930s Shanghai, telling the tale of two people from different times meeting and interacting, but their relationship ultimately coming to nothing.

In 2005, with support from the Ministry of Education’s newly inaugurated program “Overseas Training for Promising Youth in Art and Design,” Yu let a group of students that had been dispatched to New Zealand create a 90-second sizzle reel at Auckland’s Kelly Park Film Village, previously used for postproduction on the film franchise The Chronicles of Narnia.

In the end, the US$6 million never came through, though the following year Yu received a call from Kelly Park Film Village expressing interest in Time Hunter and wanting to purchase the rights.

“I couldn’t just sell it like that, though.” says Yu. “A precondition was that I be involved in production.” Now, with the signing of the ANZTEC agreement, there is a chance that Time Hunter may finally do what Lady White Snake couldn’t.

Mladen Ivancic, head of finance for the New Zealand Film Commission, says that it can be difficult for any co-production to come through—directors on both sides need to be interested and willing, and finding a story both countries’ audiences will enjoy is a challenge. “Try to make a film for the whole world and you’ll fail. I think first of all you need to make a film that works in New Zealand or Taiwan, because if it doesn’t work in your home countries, why would it work somewhere else?”

“We as an organization have to be more responsible, and we have to create more opportunities for filmmakers to meet each other,” says Ivancic, approaching the idea of Taiwan–New Zealand co-productions with characteristically Kiwi pragmatism.

While ANZTEC is opening new avenues for Taiwanese–New Zealand co-productions, trying to get such projects together is a lot like matchmaking—both sides need to understand one another and be willing to commit before anything can work. With opportunity knocking a second time, we can but wait and see what comes of this latest flirtation.

Through Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies New Zealand was thrust to prominence as a player in the cinema world, with its spectacular scenery going on to also serve as the wondrous mountains and valleys of the LotR prequel trilogy, The Hobbit.

Lady White Snake narrowly missed becoming the first official New Zealand–Taiwan 3D blockbuster co-production. Shown here are storyboards for the film from Tainan National University of the Arts professor Yu Wei-cheng.