Hobbit documents show titanic struggle

The New Zealand Government has caved to an official information request and released sensitive documents on the production disputes surrounding the Hobbit movies, and those documents disclose a titanic struggle.

According to the government briefing papers and emails from industry heavyweights like Sir Peter Jackson, the 2010 scrap over whether the Hobbit would be filmed in NZ was not so much about the Hobbit specifically but a battle over the unionisation of New Zealand’s entertainment workforce.

In one email, Jackson laments that the industry standard of treating actors as independent contractors allowed filming to take place in two separate blocks of nine weeks each, but treating actors as fulltime employees would mean they would have to be paid during months of downtime while the movie wasn’t filming…making movie-making in New Zealand impossible.

The full documents can be downloaded here: The Hobbit OIA