KEY POINTS:
For Andrew Adamson, the time has come to put away childish things.
The Auckland-born director of the first two Shrek films and the first two episodes of the Chronicles of Narnia series has shown he's the master of fairytale family fare. The international box office for his four films as director stands at US$2.3 billion ($2.9 billion) and counting.
But as he talked to the Weekend Herald yesterday as part of the promotion for his latest Narnia movie, Prince Caspian, which was partly shot in New Zealand, he laughed that it was about time he exorcised some demons and got away from stories where everyone lives happily ever after.
He's developing the werewolf novel Benighted with English producer Graham King with a view to possibly directing it.
"It's a great story, it's kind of dealing with issues of apartheid in a different way. It's a world which is 95 per cent werewolves and the 5 per cent non-werewolves are kind of kept around because they can police the one night a month when everyone goes a bit anarchic.
"So it's this interesting thing where you have a minority police state but the werewolves have most of the political power so it's kind of a great sort of parable."
And while he wants to avoid family fare in his career, at home, he says, it's about time he embraced it.
He wants some time off after a nearly a decade of overlapping projects - "I don't remember what is was like when I felt like I didn't have anything to do" - to spend more time with his family.
With wife Nicola and two young daughters, he will be shifting back to Auckland soon so the oldest, Isabel, can start primary school.
Adamson was born in Auckland, but spent much of his early life in Papua New Guinea after his family shifted there for his father's university work. But he is looking forward to putting down roots in the city again.
"I've lived lived longer in Los Angeles than anywhere else in my life and for a while I have to say I felt relatively disconnected from Auckland because I grew up in Papua New Guinea. Although my parents have been here for quite a while and most of my family have been here, it's not really until I had kids that this became home again."
That also means saying goodbye to Narnia after six years immersed in the fantasy world of C.S. Lewis.
"Yeah, there is a letting go process. The last few weeks are all about letting go and realising you can't do any more. You think you can change things right up to the last minute and suddenly the decisions you are making are final.
"I kind of went through it with the Shrek films as well and it's something you probably go through as a parent at some point too - you birth something, you take it as far as you can then it's 'Okay, okay, you're on your own now, I'll be there if you need me'."
Although he is acting as producer on the third instalment of the C.S. Lewis series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader will be directed by English veteran Michael Apted.
Adamson laughs at the suggestion that the other reason he's bowing out is that the Narnia series soon gets complicated with changing lead characters and back-and-forth chronologies. Adapting Prince Caspian, he says, was tough enough with its original story structure needing some rethinking to make it work as a film.
But as the jovial Adamson talks about the hazards of shooting Caspian, which included coping with didymo disinfectant in South Island river country and ticks in the Czech Republic, you can see that behind the laid-back exterior is a guy of quiet resolve. One who can deal with the politics and the pressures that go with making big budget fairytales for big, nervous, budget-conscious Hollywood studios.
He agrees that coming from a visual effects-animation background - he started training in Auckland before heading to Los Angeles in the early 90s - gave him a technical grounding. But being able to direct projects like Prince Caspian with a shoot which stretched from New Zealand to eastern Europe, he says is a matter of temperament. And it suits his.
"The two personality traits I have most drawn on are tenacity and empathy. Tenacity is the obvious one and that usually comes to a lot of New Zealanders, but empathy in terms of understanding the points of view of the characters and the actors and to some degree understanding where the studios are coming from, because mostly they don't come into this with evil intent.
"But at the same time I have been very fortunate. The success of the first Shrek gave me a little more freedom, the success of the second Shrek came right when I was having pretty heavy budget discussions with Walden-Disney and that gave me a lot of great leverage
"Sometimes it's helpful to have another point of view but other times you have to put on your I've-done-this-a-few-times hat and say, 'Okay, you've got an instinct for something and I've got an instinct for something but I am going to trust my own. Because one, I don't really have any choice and two my instincts have paid off in the past."'.The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian opens in New Zealand on June 19.
THE ATM, THE BANK AND THE UNHAPPY CUSTOMER
It was just the welcome home Andrew Adamson needed. Straight off the plane, this week he thought he might get some cash out of an airport ATM.
But flashing up "system unavailable" the machine swallowed his American-based card. No, said the man from ATM-operator the Bank of New Zealand over the phone, they couldn't send it to him when the technician opened up the machine.
They would be destroying it. Anyway, sir, you aren't a Bank of New Zealand customer so we can't help.
The cash-strapped expat? Director Andrew Adamson, whose movies - the first two in the Shrek and Chronicles of Narnia franchises - have made US$2.3 billion-plus.
After he completes his promotional duties on the latest Narnia instalment, Adamson and family will be returning to Auckland to live where they own a $9 million property in Westmere.
"Welcome home and please come bank with us," chuckled Adamson yesterday.
