Ricardo Simich reveals movie news for talented Kiwis. Next weekend New Zealand movie A Mistake will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and in the meantime, the trailer of Jemaine Clement ’s latest big-budget movie has been released. Fans of Clement are going to love seeing him star alongside Shazam luminary Zachary Levi in Columbia Pictures’ Harold and the Purple Crayon .
Levi stars as a man who has had a magical purple crayon since his childhood that makes whatever he draws come to life. The live-action movie is based on Crockett Johnson’s beloved children’s 1955 book of the same name. Clement is at his deadpan best playing Gary, who, at first befriends Harold before turning villainous when he gets hold of a piece of Harold’s crayon to use for evil.
Clement is in great comic company in a zany plotline that is sure to be a hit when the movie comes out in September. New Girl ’s Zooey Deschanel plays Harold’s possible love interest and Lil Rel Howery of The Carmichael Show plays one of Harold’s animal friends, a moose that becomes human in the real world. Levi is due in New Zealand later this year to film world-famous New Zealand stuntwoman and co-ordinator Zoë Bell’s feature film directorial debut here in the action-packed movie Free Fall .
Clement is having a big year. He is understood to be currently filming Aussie rugby league series Plum across the Tasman, which comes off the back of filming Andrew Niccol’s I, Object in Wellington and J.