Yesterday, owner and chief executive Dame Julie Christie confirmed post-production was moving to Auckland, affecting about four jobs, in a move she described as indicative of the state of the industry.
Most NHNZ Worldwide staff were based in Auckland, although some would continue to work for the film and documentary maker remotely from Dunedin, Dame Julie said.
“Not a lot will change. We’re just giving up the lease on the building,” she said.
Natural History New Zealand began as the wildlife unit of TV One and grew from mainly filming birds to becoming an internationally respected creator of Emmy-winning wildlife documentaries.
In the early 1990s, under managing director Michael Stedman, the company fought back from a potential shutdown to secure flourishing partnerships with Discovery Channel and its offshoots.
It was bought and sold many times in 40 years before Dame Julie bought a majority stake from Canadian private company Blue Ant Media nearly four years ago and a new company called NHNZ Worldwide Ltd was incorporated.
Dame Julie, who was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2017 for services to governance and television, was last month named the New Zealand Televisions Awards Legend of 2024.
Yesterday, former NHNZ managing director and current Film Otago-Southland chairman Kyle Murdoch said he was “shocked” to hear the news and concerned about the loss of production capability in the city.
“It’s very sad to see a great Dunedin company moving,” Mr Murdoch said.
Dame Julie said the company was “in pretty dire straits” when she bought it and “virtually at the end of its life”.
She said it had always been an international production company and she did not think of it as a Dunedin or Auckland company — it was making television in New Zealand rather than making New Zealand television.
It was not easy in Dunedin to get producers and directors and times were tough in the industry, particularly in the local market. The industry was also opposed to people flying now — “travelling is very much a no-no with a lot of clients”, she said.
NHNZ Worldwide had two sports documentaries in production, both being shot out of Auckland, and a true crime programme in development.
