On June 10, Variety broke the news that another prominent child’s fantasy will take advantage of the filmmaking facilities in Wellington, New Zealand:

“The Wind in the Willows” is being developed in a live-action and animatronics version by RG Entertainment for a fall shoot in New Zealand, with Peter Jackson’s visual effects company Weta Workshop onboard.

Ray Griggs (“Super Capers,” “I Want Your Money”) will direct and produce the $30 million feature, based on the 1908 tale by Kenneth Grahame. Richard Taylor will handle special effects, and Kim Sinclair will be production designer.

This isn’t exactly a big-budget spectacle, but it comes at a time when political controversy is again heating up over the government’s 15% rebate for foreign productions spending significant amounts of money within the country. The New Zealand Herald posted a story about it yesterday. It states that the government has paid out around NZ$200 since 2003, including NZ$45 to Avatar‘s producers and NZ$49 in King Kong‘s producers. (The higher figure for Kong presumably comes from the fact that more of the filmmaking went on within New Zealand.) The loss to the people of New Zealand comes to NZ$36 million over that time. It’s not clear what kinds of calculations went into those figures. Do the critics take into account the amount of money spent by the productions within the company and the taxes consequently paid by the people who work directly or indirectly for the productions?

Given that other countries, including Australia, provide similar rebates, tax breaks, and other forms of support, New Zealand would be likely to lose a fair amount of business from overseas without the rebate scheme.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was made before the scheme went into effect. Its success and the prospect of having the first Chronicles of Narnia film made in New Zealand both had a major impact in the government’s decision-making process. (I discuss the situation as it developed until about 2006 in the last chapter of The Frodo Franchise.) The Wind in the Willows has been named by some of the people arguing against the rebate.

According to an article posted on Stuff.co yesterday, the habit of calling the Miramar Peninsula (or Wellington in general) “Wellywood” is about to become official. Wellington Airport, which is 34% owned by the Wellington City Council, will erect its own version of the famous Hollywood sign in a position where people on incoming flights can see it. (Those that land from the north, anyway.)

This is an artist’s depiction of what the sign, scheduled to be erected in June, will look like. For those who know Wellington, this view looks more or less east across Evans Bay, over which incoming flights pass. (If you’re traveling to Wellington, try to get yourself a window on the left side.) The old headquarters of 3 Foot 6 is off to the right a short distance, and on the other side of this ridge sits the Stone Street Studios. The airport owns the land on which the sign will sit.

Peter Jackson said of the sign, “It’s Kiwi tongue-in-cheek humour at its very best, but beneath the leg-pulling is genuine pride. Several of the most popular films ever made were form in Miramar. Within a mile of the sign is the birth place of Middle-earth and Pandora.” (That mile would include Park Road Post and Weta Ltd. as well as the studios.)

Mayor Kerry Prendergast (whom readers of The Frodo Franchise will remember as one of my interviewees) said, “The sign will be one of the first things people will see when they arrive in Wellington. They will be left in no doubt that this is the heart and soul of New Zealand’s film industry.”

A mere 44% of 9000 residents polled by Stuff.co in an online survey approved of the sign, and the comments on the story are mostly negative. Some don’t want the sign as part of the view, and some object to the expense (an undisclosed sum) in a bad economic situation. Still, as the story points out, the film industry pumps about $285 million (NZ dollars) into the city’s economy, and that doesn’t count the tourism benefits. About 100,000 people are reported to have visited the Weta Cave last year.

[March 11: More controversy on the already controversial sign. The New Zealand Herald reports:

Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast has said local movie mogul Sir Peter Jackson was adamant it should be “an exact copy” of the Hollywood sign.

However, Hollywood Chamber of Commerce president and chief executive Leron Gubler said the staggered Hollywood lettering was trademarked.

“If they do that with the Wellywood sign then I would think that would be a violation of our trademark…I am checking that with our attorney,” he told The Dominion Post.

Wellington Airport said it a statement yesterday: “We are confident we will meet all our legal obligations in relation to the sign.”

I for one hope they can go ahead with the project. Of course, I don’t have to look at the sign on my daily commute. On the other hand, that area is already disfigured by smaller but noticeable signs warning pet owners about poison set out to combat the pesky local possums (unless those have been taken down since my last visit). ]

[March 18: I’m getting pretty tired of the “Hitler is angry” reworkings of the scene in Downfall where Hitler erupts in a savage tirade. It’s just too easy to adapt to any situation by adding a bunch of subtitles unrelated to what’s actually being said. But I have to admit,  “Hitler is angry about the Wellywood sign” is pretty funny. Lots of in-jokes for those who know the city, including a couple that mystified me. There are also references to the giant Gollum that climbed over the airport for a few years and to the lengthy epilogue of The Return of the King. (Thanks to Harriet Margolis for alerting me to this clip!)

Today the New Zealand Herald posted a story on the other main center of filmmaking in New Zealand, Auckland. Its suburbs have become home to studios (mainly converted warehouses and factories) cranking out film and TV shows.

Producer Rob Tapert may be American by birth, but back in the early 1990s he was looking for a cheap place to make his TV series Hercules and Xena. Now he and wife Lucy Lawless have moved to New Zealand, and Tapert is currently shooting another miniseries, Spartacus.

As in Wellington, there are post-production facilities in Auckland, notably DigiPost, which has grown considerably by providing services to Tapert’s TV projects.

The story doesn’t talk about Peter Jackson or the Miramar-based production facilities he and his partners have created–except for passing mentions of how “Wellywood” gets all the attention while Auckland’s production hums along quietly and prosperously. Apart from the uptick in foreign productions coming into the country, the success of the LOTR trilogy hasn’t had much impact on the health of Auckland’s local filmmaking companies.

As I mentioned in The Frodo Franchise, though, some of the people involved in the making of LOTR got their training by working on Hercules and Xena, among them costume designer Ngila Dickson and stunt supervisor (and Viggo Mortenson’s double), Kirk Maxwell, both of whom told me about their experiences when I interviewed them. I suspect that Auckland projects will continue to be a way for young people to get experience in the industry.

In some cases it also provides work in between projects in Wellington. I interviewed IT expert Duncan Nimmo and casting director Liz Mullane in Auckland when they were working on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

It sounds to me as though Miramar, with its cutting-edge special-effects and post-production companies, is catering to the big-budget, technically sophisticated projects like James Cameron’s Avatar, while Auckland is geared more toward television and film productions seeking, as Tapert did, a way to save money by shooting offshore. The author notes that the lack of large soundstages in Auckland studios keeps some big-budget projects away, as when the third Narnia film went to larger facilities in Australia.

The piece is an interesting read for those who are interested in how Wellington’s sudden growth in filmmaking power fits into the larger picture of New Zealand’s production.

Yesterday Variety announced that Mike Mulvihill, who produced the lavish supplements for the extended-version editions of the LOTR DVDs, is leaving New Line and moving to Fox Home Entertainment. As I described in Chapter 7 of The Frodo Franchise, Mulvihill hired producer-director Michael Pellerin to make the supplements. Now he’ll be senior vice president of global content development for Fox. Not surprisingly, he’ll concentrate on developing bonus features for DVD and Blu-ray releases.

Mulvihill had been at New Line for 14 years, so well back into the days of VHS.  Last April, Variety ran another story profiling him and saying that his future at New Line “remains murky” after the studio was merged into Warner Bros. One of the departments that disappeared from New Line was its home entertainment wing. Now Mulvihill’s future is no longer murky.

Will this have any impact on the Hobbit supplements? Michael made the DVD supplements for King Kong, even though that was produced by Universal, not New Line. My hope and guess would be that, like to many members of Peter’s team, Michael has become a regular collaborator and will probably make the Hobbit supplements as well.

The New Zealand Herald‘s website, which over the years has given us so much information on the LOTR trilogy and other Kiwi filmmaking activity, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. They’re doing a bunch of 10-best lists and have posted Timeout editor Russell Baillie’s choices of the top ten films of the past decade. He doesn’t include LOTR, though whether that’s because he doesn’t consider it a New Zealand film or just doesn’t rank it in the top ten isn’t explained. Of course, virtually every Kiwi thinks it is, but fair enough, technically it’s an American-produced film.

more »

One of the first people I interviewed while researching The Frodo Franchise was Dr. Ruth Harley, who since 1997 has been the CEO of the New Zealand Film Commission. The NZFC (linked in my blogroll) is the government agency that helps foster local filmmaking–not location work by outside projects like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or The Last Samurai (that’s the province of Film New Zealand), but features and shorts by local filmmakers like Niki Caro and Geoff Murphy. I talked with Ruth twice, once in October of 2003, in the Wellington headquarters of the commission, and again in November of 2005, as my research was winding down, at the American Film Market. She provided insights into the impact that The Lord of the Rings had on Kiwi production. As I describe in Chapter 10 of my book, despite early fears that the trilogy would overwhelm local filmmaking, it turned out to be a real boon for the industry there.

Dr. Ruth Harley, third from left in front row, and the Rt. Hon. Helen Clark, Prime Minister and Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, fourth from left, with the board of the New Zealand Film Commission

Now I read in Variety that Ruth has taken a post as head of the newly formed equivalent institution of New Zealand’s neighbor across the Tasman Sea, Screen Australia. The article describes this as “the top federal job in Oz showbiz.” If for one reason or another I should ever find myself in New Zealand again researching another book, I would miss being able to interview Ruth yet again, though I am sure that her successor would also be able to help me a great deal. I wish her the best in her new post.

If I’m emailing someone in New Zealand and want to know what time they might receive my message, I think “seven hours ago tomorrow.” That’s the time difference between Madison, Wisconsin, and anywhere in New Zealand. Right now there’s a lot of filmmaking going on in that distant place.

The May 2 issue of Screen International published a three-page spread on the lively production situation in New Zealand. It contains plenty of evidence that the positive impact that the LOTR trilogy had on the industry there continues. In the last chapter of The Frodo Franchise, I described how both productions from abroad and local films have benefited from the world-class production and post-production facilities created by Peter Jackson’s team. The gorgeous scenery that played Middle-earth continues to draw productions for location shooting. more »

Some of you probably know that my husband and I spent last May in New Zealand. (We wrote about it on our “Observations on film art and Film Art” blog, here and here.) While there I picked up some Kiwi books and DVDs, since it’s sometimes difficult to order them from abroad. One such purchase was Lindsay Shelton’s The Selling of New Zealand Movies (Awa Press, 2005). Shelton was an important behind-the-scenes figure in the country’s film industry and culture, starting the Wellington Film Festival in 1972 and becoming the overseas sales agent for the young New Zealand Film Commission from 1978 to 2000. I don’t know of any other book written by a major film-sales agent, and it gives a fascinating insight into how such things work. (As anyone who has read The Frodo Franchise is aware, I’m intrigued by the nuts and bolts of many aspects of the film industry.) more »

Over on Observations on film art and Film Art, I’ve just posted an entry about LOTR producer Barrie Osborne’s upcoming children’s fantasy, The Water Horse (being released on Christmas Day). I got to watch some of the sound mixing at Peter Jackson’s post-production facility Park Road Post during my visit to New Zealand this past May. In the entry, I talk about that and reminisce about watching sound mixing on Return of the King.

Naturally the settlement of Peter’s lawsuit against New Line Cinema and the news that he will be producing The Hobbit had to come while I was out of the country! I was in Italy, giving a paper at a conference and visiting Pompeii and Herculaneum. Exciting stuff, but it meant I didn’t have time to digest all the news coverage and write about the new situation.

That digestion got set back even more when on our way home my husband and I were delayed 24 hours by the big snow-rain-fog storm that has snarled air traffic in the Midwest this weekend. We got bussed from Minneapolis to Madison last night and arrived at 2 am. As soon as jet-lag and holiday activities permit, I’ll be posting a summary of the recent Hobbit-related events.

In the meantime, I notice that people are checking out my older entries about the Hobbit project and the New Line lawsuit. Some of the entries in the Hobbit Project category provide background information that might aid an understanding of what the lawsuit was all about.

My first visit to New Zealand actually preceded my serious research on The Frodo Franchise. In November of 2002 I was at a film conference in Australia. I planned to spend a week in New Zealand on the way home. While wearing my other hat as an Egyptologist, I have been gradually visiting museums around the world to see fragments that originally came from Tell el-Amarna, the site where I work. There were some pieces of Amarna statuary in the Otago Museum in Dunedin, on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island. It was a long way to go to see some pieces of stone that would take less than an hour to examine. I took advantage of the visit, however, to get a few days of sightseeing in and arranged for a bus trip from Dunedin to Queenstown. more »