From lion to raiona, princess to pirinihehe and ocean to moana. Kathryn Ryan meets Tweedie Waititi, film producer, writer, director and one of the creators behind the Te Reo Māori adaptations of some of Disney's most beloved films.
Her production company Matewa Media, which she runs with film-maker Chelsea Winstanley, brought an entirely te reo Māori version of Moana to the big screen in 2017. Coming next will be The Lion King and Frozen both due to premier during Matariki and te wiki o te reo Maori respectively in New Zealand next year
Waititi says the two films have taken over her life and there are only days left to finish auditions for The Lion King.
Photo: Supplied
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A team of five translators is working away at nailing in five different Māori dialects in the film.
“They’re chipping away at their mahi and the first draft should be ready very soon. The mahi is well on the way.”
Once The Lion King auditions finish on Friday, they’ll launch straight into auditions for Frozen which will release later in the year.
Waititi says the team are coordinating closely with Ngāi Tahu for Frozen, given they’re an iwi surrounded by snow.
“They know that vocab around snow and a really unique mita, so we’re excited about that one. But yeah, a lot of mahi to do.”
Once they’ve whittled their auditions to a top five for characters, they send tapes over to Disney who she says has a ‘huge’ contribution to the process.
“Quality of voice is what matters here for them and quality of te reo is what matters to us so, with our powers combined, we’re going to come up with the perfect characters.”
Part of the challenge with the films is they can’t do a straight translation from English to te reo Māori because Māori would come out at twice the length of the English lines. But that also presents an exciting opportunity.
“It’s a big opportunity for us to put in our own stories due to the nature of having to translate the world as opposed to the words. It’s the same with all the films.”
For instance, in The Lion King the lions will have kingitanga, the language of the throne, while Rafiki will be Tuhoe and other characters will come from different iwi.
“We really thought about who would match those characters. It’s been quite a process, a lot of thought has gone into it and we’re just looking forward to the next stage really.”
Waititi says the idea for the translations came when she was having dinner with Chelsea Winstanley and her two toddlers were watching Moana on repeat.
“I thought, wouldn’t this be nice if they watched this in their own language? Then we just started pulling out the chalk, scribbling on the window, dreaming up some ideas and here we are really. We touched based with Disney, gave them a call. But yeah, it start off with a few scribbles on a window, really.”
She says there was a bit of luck involved in getting to Disney with her brother Taika working on Thor for Disney and Marvel at the time.
“It was like, bro, get us a meeting. A bit of a nudge on the side.”
From there, Winstanley braved the system and fought her way through to get the pair a seat at the table.
“It’s not an easy thing to do because if you look at New Zealand alone, it’s not a huge marketplace for Disney and if you narrow that down even more to te ao Māori… it took a bit of convincing and Chelsea did a really awesome job.”
While Disney were pleased with Moana and saw that the pair knew what they were doing, it took another few years to negotiate more films, with Disney mostly focussed on Covid-19 and the launch of their streaming platform.
“But now we’re here and can’t wait to hook into it but now we have to run 100 miles an hour because Matariki is around the corner and then wiki o te reo Māori is a few weeks after that.”