The Frodo Franchise by Kristin Thompson
 
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October 24 : 2009

New Zealand losing luster as location

Yesterday Variety posted a story, “Pros pick best places for filmmaking.” A few years ago, it was almost a given that New Zealand would be on the list. I was surprised and a bit disappointed not to see it there. Naturally for cities, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York, and some others were chosen. The foreign choices included Morocco for deserts. Fair enough, there aren’t any really extensive sand deserts in New Zealand. Further afield, Madrid, Barcelona, and the Canary Islands are favorites for their coastlines, high mountains, deserts scenery, and architecturally interesting cities. That’s where I guess I’d expect New Zealand to be most competitive.

For “Best Production Resources,” Sydney, Toronto, and Montreal were picked. (I briefly described Fox Studios Australia, the biggest Sydney facility, on pages 337-8 in The Frodo Franchise.)

Without new Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia releases to display the beauties of the country’s landscapes, perhaps the thought of filming there has faded from filmmakers’ memories. True, huge productions have been based partly in the Wellington facilities built by Peter Jackson and his partners, but they’ve been using Weta Digital’s highly sophisticated special-effects capabilities: Avatar and Steven Spielberg’s Tintin movie. Between those and The Lovely Bones (which was partly shot in Pennsylvania), Weta is not in a position to take on every job offered. Besides, the Cameron and Spielberg films presumably won’t show off the New Zealand landscape much, if at all.

Perhaps The Hobbit will remind filmmakers why a few years ago everyone was aspiring to shoot in New Zealand.

[Nov 5: Variety has a brief story about how U.S. films are not shooting in Australia as much as they used to. The author notes that New Zealand is doing better, but the three titles mentioned--Tintin, Lovely Bones, District 9--are all Peter Jackson-produced items.]

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    The Frodo Franchise
    by Kristin Thompson

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    Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
    hardcover 978-0-520-24774-1
    421 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 12 color illustrations; 36 b/w illustrations; 1 map; 1 table

    “Once in a lifetime.”
    The phrase comes up over and over from the people who worked on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. The film’s 17 Oscars, record-setting earnings, huge fan base, and hundreds of ancillary products attest to its importance and to the fact that Rings is far more than a film. Its makers seized a crucial moment in Hollywood—the special effects digital revolution plus the rise of “infotainment” and the Internet—to satisfy the trilogy’s fans while fostering a huge new international audience. The resulting franchise of franchises has earned billions of dollars to date with no end in sight.

    Kristin Thompson interviewed 76 people to examine the movie’s scripting and design and the new technologies deployed to produce the films, video games, and DVDs. She demonstrates the impact Rings had on the companies that made it, on the fantasy genre, on New Zealand, and on independent cinema. In fast-paced, compulsively readable prose, she affirms Jackson’s Rings as one the most important films ever made.

    The Frodo Franchise

    cover of Penguin Books’ (NZ) edition of The Frodo Franchise, published September 2007. The tiny subtitle reads: “How ‘The Lord of the Rings’ became a Hollywood blockbuster and put New Zealand on the map.”