Pokarekare Ana Movie on Hold After James Rolleston Injury

A new movie is being planned based on the Maori love song Pokarekare Ana but producers have hit a roadblock following the injury of the film's would-be lead actor James Rolleston.

The 19-year-old Boy and The Dark Horse star remains in Waikato Hospital's intensive care unit after he was injured in a car crash on Tuesday last week.

Pokarekare Ana: Yeon-Ga, the movie, is a co-production by award winning New Zealand producer Catherine Fitzgerald and South Korean producer Sebastian Dong Hun Lee.

Set in the midst of the Korean War, the film centres around the love story between a troubled Maori soldier and a young South Korean woman.

Rolleston was to have been named as the lead actor to play the Maori soldier in the $9.7 million war romance movie.

"Certainly James' accident makes it inappropriate to name him at this stage," said Fitzgerald, who is also chair of the New Zealand International Film Festival Trust.

"We wish him a speedy and complete recovery with the privacy he and his family deserve at this time."

Rolleston was in a car that crashed into the Otara Bridge in Opotiki, in his home town in Bay of Plenty, and was flown to Tauranga Hospital in critical condition.

He was transferred to Waikato Hospital where he has remained since.

A Waikato District Health Board spokeswoman told the Herald yesterday that he was "still stable and in intensive care".

"It would be premature at this stage to publish a wish list of potential cast without having first talked to them and their agents," Fitzgerald said.

Sebastian Lee said the movie will be filmed in Korea and New Zealand, and was scheduled to begin late next year.

- NZ Herald