Peter Jackson, Weta and NZ - will they challenge Hollywood for real?

G

Guden Oden

Senior Member
Legend
The Lord of the Rings trilogy and now Kong has shown NZ has the industry and talent neccessary for making cutting-edge, extremely high-budget, high production value movies. This was stuff that was mostly the domain of Hollywood in the past. Sure, you could find Indian, Hong Kong(ese?), Japanese etc movies with advanced shooting techniques, special effects and so on, but the overall glossy slickness typically wasn't there. You know, the stuff you get when the right script, director and actors, the right post-production staff and the right score is infused with a generous amount of money.

It's hard to emulate any other way. Yet Pete's managed to put his tiny country on the map by if not beating, so at least matching Hollywood at their own game. So is he a fluke, or is he just a start of a string of new NZ film makers and slick action/adventure movies that will all share the successful traits of TLoTR and Kong?

If yes, is there a chance this might re-vitalize the flagging concept of the blockbuster movie, or is it like black-and-white, a dying breed?

Interesting thoughts, don't you think? :)
 
As population increases, so to does the audience necessary for making 'a blockbuster'. So no, that will always exist.

LotR was a beautiful series, but lets not pretend it wasn't holywood. It was produced with holywood money, had holywood actors, had a holywood script adaption. The only thing that wasn't holywood was the place where it was filmed and the nationality of the directors, and thats hardly unusual for those type of budgets.

Whats really missing these days in the film world, is competition for Holywood. Back in the 60s you had people like Kurusawa rivaling and surpassing anything holywood could make in terms of blockbusters. Heck even the Russians and the Europeans had some films that could compete with the best of (eg Solaris, 2001, Fellini movies, etc).

Unfortunately its gotten to the point in special effects, and payrolls, where the budgets have so balooned in size, that only a few studios in the world have the resources to fund such endeavours. Well, not surprisingly, they are all in America, so cultural competition has diminished somewhat. Sad, but kinda a Darwin factor regardless.
 
Fred said:
LotR was a beautiful series, but lets not pretend it wasn't holywood. It was produced with holywood money, had holywood actors, had a holywood script adaption. The only thing that wasn't holywood was the place where it was filmed and the nationality of the directors, and thats hardly unusual for those type of budgets.
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While some of the actors were made of holy wood, the script was adapted by Jackson, his wife and Philippa Boyens. No wood there.
 
Actually Fred you are wrong. All the extras were from NZ(well maybe some tourists if lucky, they had auditions at my Uni.)The special effects was NZ, the makeup was NZ as well I am sure. The vast majority of the cast were from NZ, including the bigger parts and if you lump the Aussies in, take out Gandalf the Gay since hes English, then there were not that many US actors in the movie :p.

Besides of which you all missed the number 1 reason why NZ is a good place for making movies. It is that we have such varied landscaped packed into a far smaller area than you will find anywhere else on earth. About the only thing we dont have is a true sand desert. Though we have large enough dunes and barren enough areas to play around that.

Foreign studios dont really compete that much with Holywood anymore on the "blockbusters" but less and less movies are being shot in the US as studios look to lower cost and move away from repetitive scenery(alot of Bollywood movies are made in NZ too.) Also you would be very suprised as to who funds alot of US movies. AFAIK the Germans fund alot of US movies.

I would not underestimate the Indians though, given time and more development I think they will more than compete with Hollywood.
 
Well, as a Kiwi, and someone who has about 10 friends working at vaious of Peters studios (Weta, Weta studios, etc), I have to say there were a few reasons to use NZ.

Its Cheap. As in extras would work for peanuts, rather than the USD500/day expected in the states.

Red tape to get roads closed etc was pretty much non-existant

Very good communication network - fibre backbone could be rented to any location, with satalite backup when needed.

The army helped for free


But then again, it very nearly wasnt filmed here. Our government refused to give any sort of tax break, which meant it was nearly filmed in wales/scotland. Would have been a pity.

All and all though, I dont think it will change things much

Ali
 
Ali said:
But then again, it very nearly wasnt filmed here. Our government refused to give any sort of tax break
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Well, why should they? Other people/companies don't get tax breaks for no logical reason (other than that they want one)...

How big a share of the overall ownership does Peter have of Weta and its digital counterpart?

Funny to see how much weight he lost since the RoTK btw. He's only like half the man he used to be! But despite a $20M salary, it's kind of comforting to see his hair's still just as crazy as ever, and he still seems to prefer shorts over regular pants. Then again, maybe he bathes in dollar bills after he comes home at night, going "MMUUUWWWWAAAHHAHHHAAAHHAHAHAHAHHAAAAA!!!", who knows? :LOL:

Thanks for your post btw, Ali. Very insightful! Can you tell us more perhaps?
 
Ali said:
Its Cheap. As in extras would work for peanuts, rather than the USD500/day expected in the states.
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I must tell my wife to demand her $500. (in otherwords, no, extras work for peanuts everywhere, including the states. All she got was lunch)
 
Blitzkrieg said:
Actually Fred you are wrong. All the extras were from NZ(well maybe some tourists if lucky, they had auditions at my Uni.)
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You think they'd fly in extras from California?
 
Blitzkrieg said:
The vast majority of the cast were from NZ, including the bigger parts and if you lump the Aussies in, take out Gandalf the Gay since hes English, then there were not that many US actors in the movie :p.
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Aragorn - American
Sam - American
Frodo - American
Merry - German/English
Pippin - Scottish
Gandalf - English
Legolas - English
Gimli - Welsh
Arwen - American
Galadriel - Australian
Boromir - English
Elrond - Australian
Bilbo - English
Eomer - New Zealand
Eowyn - Australian
Gollum - English
Saruman - English

By my count that is
4 American
9 Brits
4 Antipodean


CC
 
Captain Chickenpants said:
Legolas - English
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Hm, isn't he a kiwi? He certainly doesn't have an english accent when he talks normally.

Boromir - English
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I thought he was irish...

Gollum - English
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Think he's a kiwi too actually. Again, doesn't sound english at all when he speaks out of character...

Then again, what the hell do I know? :LOL:
 
Jackson isn't outside the studio system which is synonymous with Hollywood. Only George Lucas has made a big success "challenging" the studio system. Soderberg is trying it now. To some extend, Jim Camerson is doing it. LOTR was funded by the traditional hollywood studio system. So was King Kong. If you watch the DVD extras, you'll see WETA isnt' 100% Kiwi. They built up their capability quickly by importing lots of expertise from foreign fx houses. Globalism baby. The idea of assigning nationality to these things is kinda dumb nowadays.

Hollywood even imports ozzies to portray gay cowboys with north-midwest accent.
 
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Lotr was funded by New Line Cinema as I recall, I think it's Disney who owns them... So obviously they're hollywood movies in that sense. And not all of Weta's people are kiwis. Neither of these were my points though.

What I wanted to get at is we now have a big-budget, extremely high-quality movie production facility - both physically and digitally - that did NOT exist some years ago, or at least not nearly to the extent it does now. That the movies they've made have come from hollywood is sort of beside the point, because money is faceless. The cash could have come from pretty much anywhere, the production however is what counts...
 
I would not consider peter a freak, a little eccentric, but thats normal.
For example the director/screenplay writer for the chronicals of narnia was andrew adamson, a new zealander (also shrek, shrek 2, etc).
A considerable portion of narnia was produced in new zealand too. Heck, they used some cut LOTR shots during the battle (well, from memory they did).
 
It's not a particularly new phenomenon. Large chunks of the Matrix films were Australian-made, but aside from a few gems every so often our film industry still stinks. Kind of like Hollywood, I guess. :LOL:
 
"Nationality" doesn't exist anymore in the movie industry. The big studios are owned by international media conglomerates, financing comes from all over the world and more and more movies are shot outside the USA for cost reasons. The industry may be located in Hollywood but has been more or less international for a long time.

Lookie How To Finance a Hollywood Blockbuster:
Remember all those stories about how New Line was betting its entire future on the Lord of the Rings trilogy? Not quite. New Line covered almost the entire cost by using German tax shelters, New Zealand subsidies, and pre-sales.
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This "American" movie was largely financed by the NZ tax payers and German investors. It was shot and produced outside the USA. Yet, it's listed as an American movie.

How American is a movie like Cold Mountain, which was shot in Romania? Countless of movies have been shot in Prague and, more recently, Berlin - a fact that is rarely publicized. A few decades ago they would have simply built a mock Prague in some studio located in California but nowadays, everything is done to employ as little of Hollywood's super-unionized workforce as possible.

The American movie industry is slowly going the way of American manufacturing. It will probably always be perceived as an American industry for two reasons:
1. Movies cater mainly to the American audience because the American audience generates the largest revenue (50-70% of the total for most movies)
2. American actors will continue to dominate

The glories of globalization...
 
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