Sunny Gold Coast turned snow draped winter wonderland

Snow lined streets, American accents and people rugged up in beanies and scarfs. You won’t believe it’s the Gold Coast. SEE THE PHOTOS

Sit Stay Love, shot at Warner Bros. Movie World and in the Gold Coast hinterland is using movie magic to turn our city into a winter wonderland.

WHAT does the stinking hot Gold Coast have in common with an American snow-draped white Christmas?

Absolutely nothing.

Yet a new feature film, Sit Stay Love, shot at Warner Bros. Movie World and in the Gold Coast hinterland is using movie magic to turn our city into a winter wonderland.

The film joins four Hollywood-scale productions making a celluloid splash on the Gold Coast, tipped to inject $178m into the local economy. They include George Clooney’s blockbuster Ticket to Paradise, NBC’s Young Rock program with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Disney’s Nautilus project and Irreverent, a Netlflix crime series.

The film is set to be the festive, feel-good rom-com of the silly season and arrives on Australian screens on December 2, with a Gold Coast premiere at Robina Town Centre.

Set in Vermont during Christmas, Sit Stay Love follows the story of aid worker Annie Blake (Georgia Flood), who is going home to visit her family. When the local animal shelter closes, Annie steps in to save it with the help of vet and high school nemesis, Dylan (Ezekiel Simat).

Brisbane-based producer Steve Jaggi said it was no easy task in bringing a Vermont winter wonderland to life on the subtropical Gold Coast.

“While we found a great American-looking house in Mt Tamborine and utilised the wonderful sets at Movie World, what we really needed was tonnes of artificial snow,” he said.

Sit Stay Love, shot at Warner Bros. Movie World and in the Gold Coast hinterland is using movie magic to turn our city into a winter wonderland.

“The production was initially slated to be filmed entirely at Warner Brothers, but Baz Luhrmann had booked most of the sets and sound stages for his Elvis biopic.”

He said the past few years had been a “windfall” for Queensland-based film and television productions.

Director Tori Garrett said there were “enormous” challenges to overcome in filming during the Covid pandemic. “But portraying snowy Vermont on the tropical Gold Coast was one of the hardest.”

Lead actor Ezekiel Simat, a recipient of the revered Heath Ledger Scholarship who has Hollywood knocking on his door says coming back to the Gold Coast after spending a lot of time in the US was a full circle moment.

The sunny Gold Coast has had a makeover.

“My very first role was as an extra on Steven Spielberg’s Gold Coast production of Terra Nova,” he said.

“It’s what inspired me to become an actor and has led me back to the Gold Coast as a leading man on this amazing production.”

Simat reportedly has a number of lucrative Hollywood deals after being awarded the scholarship, earning him meetings with the likes of studio giants Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM).

Since 2020, the Queensland government has spent $11.8m in boosting studio capacity, which includes a new Gold Coast studio complex worth $5m.