Eight weeks of principal photography has just begun at Lake Wakatipu near Queenstown in New Zealand on the $20m family adventure The Water Giant, formerly called Ogopogo. The original plan was to shoot on Canada's Lake Okanagan, but it was too developed to offer the wilderness backdrop required. A relocation to Winnipeg was then abandoned because of the threatened SAG strike.
British director John Henderson is working from an original screenplay by Barry Authors, who is also producing under his Barryfilms banner and alongside Rainer Mockert of the Munich-based film financier MBP.
The Water Giant centres on the discovery of a mystical monster in a remote lake by the 10-year-old son of a New York oil company troubleshooter on a salvage mission. The father and son characters are played by Bruce Greenwood and Daniel Magder. Luanne Gordon is the dad's love interest, Rena Owen plays a crazy woman with some connection with the creature, and Charles Mesure and Joel Tobeck are the baddies.
The original script drew on a legend that exists amongst the native people that a Loch Ness type creature lives in Lake Okanagan. Since the change of location, however, the creative team is now distancing itself from that link.
Filming will continue in London in August using animatronics developed by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Emmy Award winner Bob Hollows has responsibility for physical effects, which are to include a helicopter crash, a submarine being crushed and what the creative team believes is the biggest non-natural whirlpool.
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