Hail to the chief

How the creators of Chief of War made an epic show from Hawaiian history - with the help of Aotearoa. BY RUSSELL BAILLIE

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Years before co-creating the thrilling historic Hawaiian saga Chief of War with Jason Momoa, Thomas Pa'akaiokahonua (Pa'a) Sibbett once worked at Kualoa Ranch. It's a nature reserve and cattle farm on O'ahu which has served as the backdrop to many Hollywood movies. It's the sort of place that offers tours to see locations from Jurassic Park, King Kong, Jumanji and Hawaii Five-0 - the Hawaiian Hobbiton.

And it was there, where he returned during the making of Chief of War, he tells the Listener, that he first decided he wanted to be a screenwriter and create something about Hawaiian history. After all, the story of King Kamehameha, who united the eight islands in the early 19th century, had long suggested itself as a Polynesian Braveheart. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson thought so. In 2018, he was announced as the star of a Kamehameha film by Braveheart writer Randall Wallace, to be directed by veteran Robert Zemeckis. Nothing has been heard since.

So with Chief of War, a nine-episode series for Apple TV+, Momoa and Sibbett got there first.

However, the show’s main focus isn't actually on Kamehameha, it's on Momoa's character Kaʻiana, a high chief of Kaua'i and a man of changing loyalties, who went into the outside world aboard European ships, then returned.

So did the show. Of the many months and many dollars - the first season has a reported budget of US$340 million, roughly NZ$537m– spent filming it, there was only a month's shoot in Hawai'i. One was a black lava-field battleground not far from the actual historic site.

The rest was done in Aotearoa where the production, according to figures released to the Listener by the NZ Film Commission, spent some NZ$180 million, less the $30m screen production rebate. That makes it the biggest television production to film here since Amazon's