A Queenstown-raised director has just been handed almost $1.5million to turn a TikTok series into a TV show.
Victoria Boult, 25, and her co-creator Rachel Fawcett first came up with the idea for n00b when NZ On Air, Screen Australia and TikTok announced Every Voice funding in 2021, through which up to about $53,000 was made available for up to five projects each in NZ and Australia.
Boult, speaking to Mountain Scene from Greece, says she and Fawcett were brainstorming ideas and concepts for their series and landed on the glorification of Y2K — and the birth of social media.
While some believed the noughties was all about Paris Hilton, Playboy Bunnies and everyone being ‘‘so beautiful’’, Fawcett — who’s now in her mid-30s — remembered it differently.
Boult: ‘‘In reality, that time was awful and cringe-inducing.
‘‘It was low-rise jeans and muffin-tops, Thin Lizzy and a terrible time.
‘‘We essentially came up with the concept for [n00b], which was just a little anthology series that did extremely well.’’
Fawcett, who’s also the series’ producer and Boult, who wrote it, launched the 12, 90-second, episodes on the social media platform mid-last year — since then, it’s garnered more than 1.5million views.
Overwhelmed by the response, Boult says she and Fawcett wondered if it could translate into a longer-format TV show and decided to apply for the NZ On Air funding.
On Tuesday they were told they’d been given up to $1,499,541, through Great Southern Television, for Three and ThreeNow, to make it happen.
‘‘Honestly, it’s kind of insane,’’ Boult says.
‘‘It feels like one of those situations where I never expected a TikTok series to turn into a television show, so right now I’m feeling a combination of overwhelmed, excited … very aware of the big challenge ahead of us, but it’s a great combination of feelings.’’
It’s also the first time in New Zealand a scripted TikTok series has been commissioned to be turned into a television show.
Boult says that’s exciting because the women feel they’re ‘‘vindicating TikTok as a platform, to actually be used as a means through which
creatives can tell their stories in a way that’s accessible and it can, potentially, be turned into mainstream television’’.
The TV series — comprising six 22-minute episodes — is also backed by Warner Bros. Discovery ANZ, and while Boult’s itching to get into the hard work on her return to Auckland in a few weeks, she says it’s too soon to say when n00b might hit NZ screens.
