Pillsbury also worked on four documentaries for TV programme Seven Days, which variously looked into life for a solo mother, an ex-convict, hospital patients, and young Māori in the city.
Pillsbury bought the rights to and worked extensively on a screen adaptation of apocalyptic sci-fi novel The Quiet Earth, before handing the project to director Geoff Murphy.
His next film was the period road movie Starlight Hotel, which starred Greer Robson as a teenage runaway exploring 1930s New Zealand with an unemployed man played by Peter Phelps.
[2] After directing two episodes of the Fox legal drama Against the Law in 1990, Pillsbury made his American feature debut with the erotic thriller Zandalee, starring Nicolas Cage, Judge Reinhold, and Erika Anderson.
[3] Following Zandalee's financial and critical failure, Pillsbury began a period of directing American television films, including Into the Badlands (1991), Eyes of Terror (1994), Sins of Silence (1996), and A Mother's Instinct, before returning to the silver screen in 1997 with Free Willy 3: The Rescue.
Pillsbury returned to America to direct the 2003 Disney film Where The Red Fern Grows and the 2009 road movie Endless Bummer.