Don’t Let Me Go: Where Was Prime Video Filmed?
Don’t Make Me Go is a drama starring John Cho and rising sensation Mia Isaac about a dying father who teaches his daughter life lessons before he dies. Although the couple travels across the United States, no part of the film was actually shot there.
Official Trailer of DON’T MAKE ME GO
Half a globe away from the film’s location, in New Zealand, filming took place from April to July 2021. Hannah Marks, the director, spoke to Screen Rant about the process:
“We really were shooting in New Zealand, so we did the winter shoots in Auckland, which was pretty weird for an American summer road trip movie,” she noted. Luckily, as an American, I felt like I had a very good idea of what certain regions of the country looked like, so we tried to mimic them as closely as possible.
Because “the beautiful New Zealand landscapes didn’t look like America,” she admits, they struggled at times.
WHERE DID YOU FILM IN NEW ZEALAND?
Don’t Make Me Go was filmed primarily in the greater Auckland area. According to The Cinemaholic, key sequences were filmed in the Massey area. Additional filming was done in Auckland on Muriwai Beach and the Twharanui Peninsula.
They also traveled to Christchurch in the Canterbury area for parts of the hospital sequences. The crew even closed an entire freeway to shoot there, which is harder to do in the US.
Much of the New Zealand filming process was documented by director Hannah Marks on Instagram. She described the experience as “3 months that changed my life.”
Instagram post view
Marks describes the challenges of filming as he focuses on the film’s production. especially in a country she had never visited before. Overall, she seems to consider herself “one lucky girl” who had the chance.