Pete’s Dragon Filming Locations: Redwood Forest, Rotorua and Beyond
Disney’s 2016 remake of Pete’s Dragon takes place in small-town 1980s America, deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. The crew never actually filmed there. They shot the entire production in New Zealand instead, and this guide to Pete’s Dragon filming locations covers all of it. Its most memorable backdrop, the ancient forest Elliot the dragon calls home, is Rotorua’s Whakarewarewa Forest New Zealand, better known simply as the Redwood Forest.
Director David Lowery has talked about why New Zealand fit the story so well. He described the country as having a timeless quality, the same quality the film itself was going for. You can walk fifty feet down a road here, he said, and feel like you’re standing in a forest that’s been there since the beginning of time. That feeling carries the whole movie, and it’s rooted in a handful of real, visitable New Zealand locations across both islands.
Redwood Forest, Rotorua: Home of Elliot the Dragon
The crew shot most of the film’s forest scenes in Whakarewarewa Forest, just outside Rotorua in the Central North Island. The forest gets its nickname from the towering Californian Redwoods planted here. Some of the trees are now well over a century old. Their scale and unusual presence in New Zealand made the forest a convincing double for the Pacific Northwest wilderness the story needed.
The Redwoods cover more than 5,600 hectares around Rotorua. The trees themselves are genuinely striking, tall and straight, and packed closely enough to block out most direct sunlight. That combination of scale and stillness is exactly what gives the forest its otherworldly feel on screen. It’s the same quality that makes it one of New Zealand’s most popular walking and mountain biking destinations today.
Unlike a purpose-built film set, nothing about Redwood Forest Rotorua needed to be constructed for the camera. The trees were already there, planted as an experimental forestry project more than a century before Disney ever arrived. That’s part of why the forest reads as so genuinely ancient on screen, because it is.
Tapanui: The Real Town Behind Millhaven
For the film’s small logging town of Millhaven, the production turned to Tapanui, a real town of around 900 people in West Otago, on the South Island. For roughly two weeks, the production transformed several local businesses to fit the film’s 1980s American setting. Filming closed the town’s main street off entirely to accommodate the shoot.
Local residents took on roles as extras throughout the shoot. Nearby, the crew also made use of the Conical Hill sawmill. It stood in for the fictional Blue Mountain Lumber mill that drives much of the film’s plot. It’s a rare case of a genuinely small New Zealand town getting a starring role, rather than just a backdrop glimpsed in passing.
Wellington: Where Elliot Came to Life
While Rotorua and Tapanui provided the physical locations, Wellington did the invisible work. Weta Digital, the visual effects studio behind The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, brought Elliot the dragon to life here, frame by frame. Weta completed much of the film’s CGI work at its Wellington studios. Additional production work took place at Stone Street Studios nearby.
Wellington also hosted live filming, not just visual effects. Battle Hill Farm Park, just outside the city, became the setting for one of the film’s most memorable moments. It’s where Pete leaps off a cliff and lands safely on Elliot’s back. A short distance away, Hutt Valley Hospital appears as the film’s hospital setting.
Queenstown: The Final Scenes
For the film’s climax, the production moved south to Queenstown. Deer Park Heights, overlooking Lake Wakatipu, provided the setting for the film’s final scenes. It’s the same working farm that’s also appeared in The Lord of the Rings and several other major productions. If that name sounds familiar, we’ve covered its other film credits in our guide to Paradise, Glenorchy’s Lord of the Rings filming locations.
The crew captured Elliot’s flight sequences using aerial helicopter footage over Queenstown’s mountainous landscape. The footage takes in the Remarkables and Lake Wakatipu from above. It’s a dramatic final act for a film that spends most of its runtime in dense, quiet forest. Queenstown’s scale gives the ending a sense of space the earlier forest scenes deliberately withhold.
Every Pete’s Dragon Location, Mapped Out
Here’s how the production’s New Zealand locations break down across both islands, for anyone still wondering exactly where was Pete’s Dragon filmed.
| Location | Region | Role in the Film |
| Whakarewarewa Forest | Rotorua | Elliot’s forest home, most of the film’s outdoor forest scenes |
| Tapanui | West Otago | The town of Millhaven, including the main street and local shops |
| Conical Hill Sawmill | West Otago, near Tapanui | Stood in for the Blue Mountain Lumber mill |
| Battle Hill Farm Park | Wellington | Pete’s cliff leap onto Elliot’s back |
| Hutt Valley Hospital | Wellington | The film’s hospital scenes |
| Stone Street Studios & Weta Digital | Wellington | CGI work bringing Elliot to life, plus additional production |
| Deer Park Heights | Queenstown | The film’s final scenes, overlooking Lake Wakatipu |
Principal photography ran from January to April 2015. The production moved between all four regions over that period. Very little of the film was shot on a soundstage. Almost everything outside the CGI work happened on real New Zealand terrain.
Walking Among the Redwoods Yourself
Rotorua Redwoods New Zealand is genuinely easy to visit, and it doesn’t require advance booking for a casual walk. Marked trails wind through the redwoods at ground level, popular with both walkers and mountain bikers. For a different angle on the same trees Elliot called home, the Redwoods Treewalk is worth the extra time. It lifts visitors around 12 metres above the forest floor along a series of suspended bridges. The result is a genuinely dragon’s-eye view of the canopy below.
Rotorua itself offers plenty beyond the forest, from geothermal attractions to Māori cultural experiences. That makes it an easy full or multi-day stop, rather than a quick drive-through on the way somewhere else. Our Rotorua region guide covers the wider area in more detail.
Turning This Into an Actual Trip
Because Pete’s Dragon was filmed across both islands, a full film-location trip means combining a North Island stop in Rotorua with a South Island leg through Wellington and Queenstown. A North & South Island tour package can string these together into one coherent route, rather than two separate trips.
If you’d rather build something around your own specific interests, our tailor-made tour packages can help. They can shape an itinerary around Rotorua’s forests, Wellington’s film industry, and Queenstown’s dramatic scenery, in whatever order suits your trip. For more of the country’s screen credits in one place, our Best New Zealand Filming Locations guide rounds up the rest. You can add any of these stops directly to your custom vacation package wishlist.
A Forest That Didn’t Need Hollywood’s Help
The redwoods around Rotorua were already well over a century old when Disney’s cameras showed up. They didn’t need dressing up, ageing, or digital touch-ups to look like they belonged to a story about something ancient and half-forgotten. That’s a rare thing for a film location. Most sets are built to serve the story. This one just happened to already exist, and the story bent itself around it instead.
If you go looking for Elliot, you won’t find him. What you will find is a forest that looks exactly as strange and quietly enormous in person as it does on screen, minus the CGI dragon peering out from behind a trunk. Now you know Pete’s Dragon filming locations in full, reach out and we’ll help you fold a visit into a longer North Island trip, built around Rotorua and whatever else is on your list.
