From NZFC’s newsletter March, 2011:

In recognition of significant critical and commercial success the Board has agreed to create additional Talent Awards. These are to be discretionary and recommended by the Chief Executive to the Board annually. The first recipients are Taika Waititi for Boy, Gaylene Preston for Home By Christmas and Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland for The Six Dollar Fifty Man.

More about Talent Awards Programme here.

Taika has also received more funds for his another project, but this time as a writer. Together with Paul Murphy, he is writing a cinematic adaptation of Barry Crump’s Wild Pork and Watercress, provisionally titled Land of Tears.

“It’s about these two outcasts, this old Pakeha guy and a young Maori boy who’s been in and out of foster care,” Waititi said. “They basically disappear into the bush to escape social welfare and the police who want to take the boy away.”

NZHerald from 2009