Spy: Sam Neill's magical new Hollywood role

Scene from The Portable Door, starring Chrstoph Waltz and Sam Neill.

Kiwi acting legend Sam Neill has just finished filming fantasy flick The Portable Door with Inglourious Basterds' star Christoph Waltz in Queensland.

Another famous Kiwi actor, Rachel House, of Thor: Ragnarok fame is in the movie too.
Quentin Tarantino favourite and double Oscar-winning Waltz, 64, and multiple Golden Globe nominee Neill, 73, head the cast.

The mystical adventure follows two interns who start working at a mysterious London firm J.W. Wells and Co where many of the employees are involved with magic. Villains, Humphrey Wells (Waltz), the CEO of the company and middle manager Dennis Tanner (Neill) are disrupting the ancient, magical world with modern corporate practices.

The film is being produced by The Jim Henson Company, famed for The Muppets and such movies as Labyrinth, and is expected to take the world of illusion to the next level.

Actor Rachel House also stars in the upcoming film.

House, 49, posted a picture to social media of her castmates, including Neill and Australian star Miranda Otto on the Gold Coast and called the movie's director, Jeffrey Walker, brilliant.

"He is one of the consistently coolest and kindest directors the world has known. Jim Henson would be stoked the legacy lives on with this fulla. And I got to be an English-accented but ALWAYS MĀORI wizard. STOKED," said House.

Neill filmed Jurassic World: Dominion last year in the UK, amid strict Covid conditions, before returning to his beloved vineyard, Two Paddocks, in Queenstown. He is now back in Europe, this time in Turin, Italy. This week he posted a picture of life seemingly back to normal in a piazza, telling his Instagram followers how nice it was to see Italians socialising again after the past 18 months.

With numerous movies coming out, Neill might be in Turin representing one, before the deadline for the Torino Film Festival nominations this week.

The Hunt for the Wilderpeople star's next announced movie is called Freedom Flight. It is the true story of the first hijacking in Hungary, where unarmed students fleeing Communism, divert a domestic flight with an unarmed secret service agent on board to West Germany. The movie is expected to film in Europe.