Bryce Dallas Howard Interview

It opens on general release in New Zealand on September 15. “Particularly getting the chance to see this movie – a Disney film – in front of an audience of children is going to make me emotional”.

New Zealand Tourism is using the film’s release to push the country’s clean-green image, just like it did with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The movie was filmed Rotorua’s redwood forest, around Wellington, Queenstown and in Tapanui, which became “Millhaven” for the goal of the film. “We got to shoot it in New Zealand”.

Bryce Dallas Howard vamped it up at the Hollywood premiere of Pete’s Dragon outside El Capitan Theatre on Monday.

First told almost 40 years ago, Disney’s “Pete’s Dragon” is being re-imagined into a new fantasy film. Orphaned and left alone in the woods after his parents’ fatal vehicle crash, Pete finds Elliot, a 70ft furry fire breathing dragon that has more in common with an excited puppy than Daenerys’s unruly pets in Game of Thrones.

“Film tourism is one more way we can tell the story of our people and place and showcase the very best of what New Zealand has to offer as a holiday destination”. “Each activation we’ve created with Disney has been unique to each film and we will continue to push innovation in the VR category to create even more immersive experiences to complement Disney films”. “I hadn’t seen it since I was six or seven years old, and so I remembered the way it made me feel, how delightful it was and how much I loved the relationship between the boy and the dragon”, he said on the red carpet. “It also reinforces our message that everything in New Zealand is close together – with tourist activities set in and around film locations playing a big part in the visitor experience”.

The United States is a key market for New Zealand tourism. They are offering two plush figures of Elliot, the dragon.

Disney’s “Pete’s Dragon” opens in USA theaters on August 12, 2016.