NZ Herald's editor at large Shayne Curry travels from Timaru to Queenstown in the next leg of the "The Great NZ Road Trip".
They made their business fortune when their ready-to-eat food empire sold for $A125m. This Queenstown couple are now pouring their “blood sweat and tears” into their own feature film.
An extraordinary story – perhaps worthy of its own film – is unfolding behind a new New Zealand feature movie.
A South Island couple who made their business fortune through the sale of a high-profile Australian food business are now pursuing their silver-screen dreams, spending millions to privately fund a feature film shot in Queenstown.
Lance Giles and Jordana Stott have invested more than $10m of their own money into the feature film Forgive Us All, an apocalyptic neo-Western film that, between them, they have written, produced, and directed.
The film has a prominent Australasian cast including Lily Sullivan, Callan Mulvey, Richard Roxburgh, Dean O’Gorman, Lawrence Makoare and Giles himself.
Forgive Us All was shot in and around Queenstown, including in the Rees Valley near Glenorchy, in New Zealand’s autumn. It has been in post-production and is expected to be released in mid-2025.
The project is all the more extraordinary in that there are no banks, studios or other investors helping finance the film – it’s coming directly from Giles and Stott.
Giles told the Herald he and his wife had a passion for filmmaking and had always dreamed and planned to pursue their own projects.
“It was about 13, 14 years ago when we got together – we thought, all right, we’re going to have to be in a position where we can try to fund our own productions to remove the red tape and be in control of our destiny.
“We started a business in a completely different sector, to be able to financially be in a position to hopefully fund our own feature film one day.
“At the heart of it, our passion was always film.”
It wasn’t just any different sector, or business.
The couple, then living in Brisbane, founded meal-kit company Youfoodz in 2012 – essentially starting as a family business, it grew to sell more than 60m food kits over the next nine years, with annual sales of more than $150m. Staff numbers grew from 20-30 to more than 1000.
“I had seen a gap ... I came from the fitness industry and saw there was a massive gap for ready-to-eat meals at that stage,” says Giles, originally from Marlborough.
Lance Giles was chief executive of Youfoodz, which sold for A$125 million in 2021.
In 2021, Youfoodz - by then, publicly listed - was sold to HelloFresh for A$125 million and reports out of Australia at the time talked of a “long-awaited payday for Lance Giles and his family”.
The Australian newspaper reported that interests connected to Giles still owned 14.5% of the company after an earlier IPO, which meant a cashout of $18m.
Giles, who was praised by HelloFresh and stayed on as chief executive of Youfoodz for a handover period, talks of many lessons learned and obstacles to overcome over the past decade.
However, he’s now delivered his own plot twist: “It was really rewarding this year to be able to step on set [with] an incredible team and film our first feature film.”
Lance Giles, left, and Jordana Stott on the set of Forgive Us All in Queenstown. Photo / Christopher Moss
The pair have co-written and co-produced Forgive Us All – Stott also directs the film and Giles plays one of the characters.
This is the couple’s first feature film but they are aiming to fund and produce more.
Giles is quick to praise his wife as an exceptional writer and director who played a critical role in the commercial and creative marketing of Youfoodz.
“We produced over 30 different TV commercials, our company invested a lot in that sector. We were always working on developments in film.
“Our commercials were quite extravagant. Because of Jordana’s background, it wasn’t just your standard TV commercial. We really told a narrative and put a storyline in there. We almost incorporated some short films into them.”
The pair have privately paid for an experienced cast and crew for their movie.
Industry website IMDB describes it as, “a story of redemption in a world gone dark”.
According to publicity material, the movie is based in a post-apocalyptic world “where a biotech virus has transformed humans into violently deranged cannibals”.
“A bereaved mother who has lost everything shelters in an isolated mountain cabin while teetering on the edge of giving up. When a desperate stranger arrives with a story of hope, she must choose whether to help or remain hidden.”
More than 100 cast and crew worked on Forgive Us All over a five-week period. Photo / Christopher Moss
Clearly the popularity of neo-Western-style hits such as Yellowstone should give Forgive Us All an extra boost.
“It touches on a lot of genres,” says Giles. “It’s a Western, yes, [but] we have a lot of action in there. There’s a lot of horse riding, there’s a lot of good stunt work, there’s a lot of fight scenes.
“But then there’s also a lot of drama and a lot of intimate and heartfelt moments.”
Lily Sullivan, whose CV includes Evil Dead Rise and Picnic at Hanging Rock, plays the lead role, alongside fellow Australians Callan Mulvey (The Last King of the Cross, 300: Rise of an Empire) and Richard Roxburgh (Van Helsing, Rake).
Forgive Us All lead actor Lily Sullivan.
Australian actor Richard Roxburgh stars in Forgive Us All.
Aside from Giles, the New Zealand cast includes Dean O’Gorman (After the Party, The Hobbit trilogy), Bree Peters (Special Destination, Shortland Street), and Lawrence Makoare (The Convert, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King).
Early on, Giles and Stott also found experienced New Zealand producer Jared Connon - he has a rich CV, including as location manager on the likes of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, The Lovely Bones, King Kong and The Hobbit trilogy, and more lately as a production manager and producer in his own right.
Last year he produced and self-distributed the socio-political documentary on the Parliament protest, River of Freedom.
New Zealand producer Jared Connon has a rich CV when it comes to filmmaking. Photo / Christopher Moss
Connon remembers receiving a voice message from Giles earlier in 2023 – it appeared to be a standard pitch; a guy from Aussie wanting to make a film.
He couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing when he called Giles back.
He told his wife after the call: “Oh my goodness... it’s not just some guy who wants to make a film, and can I find them some money?
“These guys are ready to go. They’ve got a script, they’re financed, they’ve got a vision, and they need a producer here in New Zealand. So pretty much they signed me up at that point... let’s get into it.”
Giles has moved back to New Zealand with Stott – the couple had earlier bought a home in the Gibbston Valley.
They were adamant they wanted to film in the Queenstown region.
“We always had plans to come back to the roots. Kiwis go away and experience the world, but there’s something so special about New Zealand,” says Giles.
They also knew the style of films they wanted to make.
“You don’t get much better than New Zealand. One, obviously for the scenery and the landscape – the bucolic landscape is just incredible.
“It made sense coming back to Queenstown, it was back to the South Island where I was born and raised. The landscape here was what we wanted to really feature throughout our films.”
He also praises the 100-plus crew that Connon pulled together for the five-week shoot. “There’s just this incredible work ethic of Kiwis.”
From day one, “the camaraderie and the team and the work ethic was just there”.
Giles is proud most of the investment in the film has ended up in the local Queenstown economy.
He and the film crew worked closely with local businesses and landowners such as farmers to make the dream a reality. “You can just have good honest conversations with them, they can work on a handshake – there’s a good loyalty and authenticity to the local community.”
Director and investor Jordana Stott on the set of Forgive Us All. Photo / Christopher Moss
Connon also praises the Queenstown Lakes District Council, and the region more generally, for the support the film has received.
The shoot was delayed initially, partly as a roll-on effect of the US union strikes.
“We decided that we’d come back to the autumn, which was for many reasons, a better choice,” says Connon. “It gave us more time to work on the script. It gave us more time to gather our resources, and also the landscape in Queenstown is just stunning in autumn.
“Personally, it’s always my favourite time of the year to film because you just get so much better light, you’ve got better colour.”
A vista of one of the landscapes that forms the backdrop of Forgive Us All. Photo / Christopher Moss
On the final day of shooting, Giles stood at Glenorchy, surrounded by that stunning landscape and the crew. He knew his passion was being fulfilled.
That’s not to say he and Stott are not focused on ensuring the film is commercially successful.
“We’re also business minded and I’m very much an entrepreneur as well. So it is, okay, how can we make sure that we’re making the right choices to be able to sell and market this film as successfully as we can?”
The film will be pitched to festivals, with a theatrical release likely in mid-2025, ahead of important other deals, such as streaming contracts.
The Great New Zealand Road Trip - leg 12.
He and Stott want it to be commercially successful, so they can make more films.
Stott is already back writing.
“I think for any film, there’s always aspirations,” says Giles. “However, we’re also conscious it’s our first film. We want to try to learn and optimise. Our goal is to make many films into the future.
“Whatever we can recoup for this film will be reinvested into the next film and into future films.”
The production is eligible for the 40% screen production rebate, administered by the New Zealand Film Commission.
“It really supports Kiwis that are wanting to invest. For us it, it really helps,” says Giles.
“We’ve put a lot on the line but we took a lot of time to make sure we had a really good script. Jordana wrote that, and when that got circulated to Jared and some of the heads of departments, it was really well received.”
That gave the pair “a lot of confidence”.
“Yes, we’ve had to invest, you know, our own blood, sweat and tears ... but we have confidence in the script, we have confidence in the team.”
Connon says the nature of the project meant the production was shot with agility, with Giles and Stott fully involved and on the set each day in a full collaboration.
The cast and crew also saw firsthand the couple’s passion and excitement.
“Everybody was just flabbergasted that they were able to do it, willing to do it, and did do it, as well. And so everybody put an extra 10-15% into everything because they knew those people that were standing there – that they were talking to on set every day – were pouring themselves into the film.
“So they wanted to give more as well.”
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor.
