East of Eden a sprawling hit starring Florence Pugh, Dunedin and Ōamaru

Nearly two years after streets in Dunedin and Ōamaru were transformed into a film set, it’s hoped the success of the production East of Eden will bring more big-budget projects to Otago.

The series starring Florence Pugh – based on John Steinbeck's 1952 novel – was filmed in the summer of 2024/2025 in New Zealand. Parade reports the seven-episode Netflix mini-series has hit number one on the streaming platform.

Ōamaru’s heritage precinct was shut down for a week and some parts of Dunedin for a day, with crews starting about 4am on make-up and traffic changes, and working late until the evening.

Some of the locals involved had never acted before, and simply answered an ad in the paper.

Moana Kyle was one of them.

"We had to either walk up and down, up and down, up and down, and the same over at the Stuart Street as well," Kyle said.

She said it was a fun day for a lot of reasons.

"Our makeup, our clothes, fed well, treated really beautifully," Kyle said.

Student Eva Clarke was also an extra on set in Dunedin.

"It was filled with a lot of really old Victorian kind of stuff like carriages, posters.

"I knew everybody was in costume.

"You had old fellas with cigarettes and walking canes and stuff," Clarke said.

"I was instructed to start walking as soon as I saw Florence. So I got to directly walk right past her which was quite cool – turn around – and then walk towards the camera.”

Clarke said it was a “surreal” experience.

The traffic control for Ōtepoti and Ōamaru took months of planning and came with some unusual jobs.

"So typically, traffic management, you would follow around diggers, sucker trucks, hydro excavators and all that kind of stuff, but this day, one of our crew's jobs was to follow around the horse and cart," traffic management and control manager Grace Morris said.

But Morris said the teams weren't too star-struck.

"I think that's the great thing about Dunedin and Ōamaru, and New Zealand as a whole, that there can be famous people everywhere – we just talk to them like they're normal people.

"We just gave a yarn to them and off you go," Morris said.

The shoot came during an already busy Otago summer, with the influx of cast and crew felt across Dunedin and Waitaki.

"But what was so cool was the tourists that it brought, the community that it brought, even just all the accommodation through the whole of Ōamaru and Dunedin, you couldn't get accommodation for a 50km radius because everything was booked out by staff and crew, which was super cool to see," Morris said.

The Waitaki District Council also ran a photo competition called Through Our Eyes – Memories of East of Eden for locals who watched the filming from the roadside.

Parts of the production were also filmed around Thames and Auckland.

Film Otago Southland's Stefan Roesch said New Zealand's rebates of "20% plus 5% uplift" help draw international productions, but Otago's locations are also a selling point.

"And then studios, of course, or streamers, look at exchange rate, you know, crew depth and talent, infrastructure.

"And, Otago, we have some unique locations, especially as in standing in for some areas in America, like, you know, talking South California or Colorado.”

And now the crew's gone; he is hoping the series will bring more benefits.

"The long tail, as I say, is always when the crew leaves, and we get to see our Dunedin, our Ōamaru on the big screen.

"So screen tourism has never been bigger on a global scale than it is now," Roesch said.

Film Otago Southland is also launching a locations map showing where various productions have been shot around the region.

"So in terms of the work that went into it, it's about getting the rights for some of the images, which can be a bit tricky, but also I watched all the films in there and then timed the seconds where a certain location was showcased.

"And the time codes are on the brochure," Roesch said.