With a new year upon us, it's high time to ponder what there is to look forward to in the coming months. So here are 11 intriguing prospects heading our way in local television, movies and music...
THE ALMIGHTY JOHNSONS
Outrageous Fortune's dream team lead this year's TV programming with their new comedy drama about five regular Kiwi brothers of Nordic descent who like to get their kit off - in a Thor meets Spartacus in Mt Albert kind of way.
It starts next month
on TV3 and stars familiar faces including Keisha Castle-Hughes as a nurse.
SUPER CITY
Comedienne-actress Madeleine Sami adopts five roles in this new TV3 series about the people of Auckland directed by her friend Taika Waititi.
While it will inevitably attract comparisons to Australian mockumentary Summer Heights High, Sami has already proved she can do multiple personalities by playing all nine roles in the stage production of No. 2, directed by Toa Fraser in 1999.
UNDERBELLY NZ
The next series of Underbelly will move to New Zealand to focus on the drug lord of the 1970s, Mr Asia.
NZ on Air has signed off $3.8 million towards the production, which will screen on TV3.
At the centre of the story is Christopher Martin Johnstone, known as Mr Asia, who made an estimated $1 billion importing heroin into New Zealand before he was killed by sidekick Terry Clark, the main character of the second season of the Australian series.
MY WEDDING AND OTHER SECRETS
After generating attention with her autobiographical 2005 documentary Banana in a Nutshell and hilarious short Take 3, Roseanne Liang was approached by South Pacific Pictures to turn the story of a Kiwi-Asian romance into a feature film.
My Wedding and Other Secrets will be released on March 17 and stars Michelle Ang and one of Go Girls' honorary gals, Matt Whelan.
REST FOR THE WICKED
Tony Barry, John Bach, Ilona Rogers and Ian Mune are among the impressive cast in a detective-comedy set around an old people's home.
Barry plays an ex-cop who steps out of retirement for one last case and hunts down his old nemesis, Bach, now in a retirement village.
Going undercover for the job he discovers a world of sex, drugs and rocking chairs.
THE DEVIL'S ROCK
Short-film director Paul Campion's feature film debut is a World War II thriller about a couple of Kiwi commandos on a mission in the Channel Islands on the eve of D-Day who discover the occupying Nazis are recruiting demonic forces - yeah, kind of like they did in Hellboy.
This one employs the full force of Weta Workshop - Campion used to work for Weta Digital - and stars Outrageous Fortune's Craig Hall, serial-villain Matt Sunderland and director Jonathan King in a cameo as a "dead German".
THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE
Veteran director Lee Tamahori has been keeping a low profile since his 2006 cross-dressed encounter with the LAPD.
But with this film about a man who was forced to become a double for Saddam Hussein's sadistic son, Uday, and starring rising Brit star Dominic Cooper hitting the international festival circuit - it's at Sundance and Berlin - it could be that the man who brought Once Were Warriors to the big screen is making a career comeback. Yep, he's pulling himself up by his bra straps ...
RUBY FROST
She dresses like a Japanese pop star and sounds like Kate Bush.
The pint-sized musician, who is actually called Jane de Jong, caught everyone's attention when she won the 42 Unheard competition in December 2009.
Last year she managed to get the attention of producer Chris Zane (Passion Pit, Mumford and Sons) as well as local producer Mt Eden Dubstep. An album is just around the corner.
KIMBRA
Since placing at the Rockquest six years ago, wide-eyed and wiry Kiwi popstar Kimbra has been picked up by Australian label Forum 5 and has an imminent debut album.
It will follow the release of her single Settle Down, which paints her as a quirkier Regina Spektor who beat-boxes and moves like Janelle Monae.
ZOWIE
Bionic Pixie has a name. And an album on the way.
Pleather and spandex-wearing local muso Zoe Fleury spent most of last year reinventing herself as a pop star and travelling to the States to work with top producers and writers.
While the less-restrained tunes she released as Bionic Pixie were known only in indie circles, her new Zowie single Broken Machine is now blasting across the commercial airwaves.
KODY AND BIC
The Mint Chicks' frontman Kody Nielson is notorious for breaking stage equipment, while Bic Runga is known for her sweet lullabies.
It might be an unlikely pairing but their rollicking-yet-mystical first single, Darkness All Around Us is a good sign of what's to come.
Their first live performance will be at the Big Day Out. Meanwhile, Runga has a new album on the way too.
-TimeOut
