Bullet Heart Club celebrate as love story blossoms

Rochelle Bright and Kitan Petkovski started Bullet Heart Club in 2013. Photo / Sarah Graham

Boutique theatre company’s opening Kiwi musical Daffodils is to be made into a movie.

A tiny Auckland theatre company is celebrating after learning its debut show will be made into a movie.

Bullet Heart Club, started by Rochelle Bright and Kitan Petkovski in 2013, will develop Daffodils, which is inspired by true events, into a feature film with Emmy award-winning production company, Wellington's KHF Media.

A cabaret-style musical, Daffodils features iconic New Zealand songs from Crowded House, Bic Runga, Don McGlashan, Dave Dobbyn and The Mint Chicks. It tells the story of playwright Bright's parents who met in Hamilton in the 1960s.

Silver Scroll winner LIPS (Stephanie Brown and Fen Ikner) and musician Abraham Kunin remixed and reimagined the pop-rock music that shaped the romance of Bright's parents. The trio will help Bright with the screenplay while KHF Media's David Stubbs plans to produce and direct the film.

"We can't wait to go even deeper, visually and musically, to bring this love story to the screen but it's going to be a very different kind of Kiwi film," says Bright, who will begin the screenplay in March.

Talks are under way to secure rights to the songs. While it will remain a musical, the story and characters will be expanded and new songs may be added.

"The script development is supported by the NZ Film Commission which is a vote of confidence in Rochelle and there's genuine excitement about the project because no one has made a musical feature film in New Zealand for a very long time," says Stubbs.

Since its 2014 debut, Daffodils has played in 12 New Zealand cities including a one-night stopover in Wellington where Stubbs saw it. He says as soon as he watched the show, he started talks with Bright and Petkovski about the possibility of a feature film.

Daffodils the stage show returns to Auckland's Q Theatre for performances in mid-February before it heads to the Australian Performing Arts Market in Brisbane.