Stupid Hobbits!

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
19
1048

Yay, we paid the richest Billionaire NZ$132 million for LOTR and he then took season 2 to the UK?

Stupid Hobbits!

Amazon’s Lord of the Rings New Zealand exit a tourism nightmare

Amazon’s decision to move production of future seasons of the Lord of the Rings to the United Kingdom represents something of a nightmare scenario for New Zealand’s tourism industry, which sounded the alarm two years ago that a country like the UK could forever sever our reputation as the “home of Middle-Earth”.

Before the deal was inked with Amazon, tourism officials singled out the UK as a potential threat to the strong link New Zealand has to the film franchise.

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“Should another destination ‘closer to home’ (for example the UK) deliver the same value proposition, then NZ should expect [the Lord of the Rings] legacy to quickly taper off – particularly in the current climate of slowing global travel and economic uncertainty,” warns one tourism document, released under the Official Information Act.

Tourism officials warned that the decades of investment New Zealand tourism has put into the Lord of the Rings could evaporate if another country were to become associated with the franchise.

So this damages our tourism brand, leaves our movie industry desperate and Stuart Nash is unable to explain why he didn’t cement into place season 2.

Surely the lesson from this Amazon LOTR fiasco is that the Government should be pumping that money into the local Film industry rather than subsidize American billionaires.

If the global movie industry are focused only on price we are always going to get played, surely the time is now to directly fund our own movies and our own stories with our own people.

I acknowledge that putting $100m annually into our own film industry might end up with the appalling echo chamber that NZ on Air social engineering has mutated into so any plan to do this would require a Film Commission with far better panels than NZ on Air.

I can’t see why we should keep subsidizing Anerican movies.

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19 COMMENTS

  1. “I can’t see why we should keep subsidizing Anerican movies”

    Nor why we should use their spelling conventions.
    PS it’s USA not America.

  2. Agreed, we need to move on and support local. In so many areas we need to start relying on ourselves – foreign companies are only interested in how much of our efforts than can profit from.

  3. Martyn, my first thoughts where; “are the foreign production teams fed-up with our Housing Crisis? Are the government subsidies now not covering the wages demanded by workers to hold microphone booms?”

    One by one I think ‘The Billionaire Class’ is starting to see through NZ propaganda. You don’t just “up sticks” on the production of the MOST expensive TV Series in history without a darn good reason!

    Lead people on LOTRs would have been unhappy with their living situation in New Zealand, IMO. They simply couldn’t see NZ working for them over the next decade.

  4. 100% agreement.

    Keep that money pumping into our home grown industry. This is not a loss, it is an exciting opportunity.

    Fuck giving our money to the richest man on earth. Billionaires have to be the biggest bludgers of them all!

  5. Unfortunately its an actual example of cultural cringe. Our MPs and cabinet ministers have been indoctrinated to kow tow to business interests, preferably overseas business interests even we they hold all the cards. The idea that we could change or introduce laws to improve outcomes for ourselves is seen as aenathema. Likewise the Minister couldn’t possibly have had the temerity to negotiate with a corporate entity. The idea that he wouldnt simply take what was offered and be grateful is laughable. Unfortunately this is the way we have sold ourselves down the river over the past forty years. Why stop now?

  6. True story: I was offered a job on the production of LOTR, building sets. I said I would think it over, at home I came to the conclusion, that it was too risky a job. I didn’t think that the show would last. Is it just me, or are TV shows about elves and dragons completely over rated? Also i thought that if anyone would screw over a tradie, it’d be Bezos.

    Three months later the guy who offered me a job, is asking me for one.

  8. Jolly good show. Tolkien was an Oxford University professor with expertise in the Anglo-Saxon history which provided not only inspiration, but the geographical and physical milieu for his magical writings – the country of his boyhood. Transposing his stories to a cold threshold land at the bottom of the world which wallows in anti- intellectualism, and sees the deification of ball-kicking All Blacks – and the knighting of grubby merchant bankers- as sublime human achievements, was a spiritual obscenity. Time to go home.

      • Ah ha, WK. I read The Hobbit as a child and my siblings and children probably read the lot, but I discovered the Norse mythology via Wagner and his Ring Cycle, and this is the stunningly noble mythology which also inspired Tolkien, and I stuck with Wagner, but keep quiet about it as a certain German philosopher, and an evil Chancellor, were also Wagner devotees, and terrible things happened from all this – but I shall watch your YouTube recommendation as I always enjoy them thank you.

  10. 2 down,2 to go (that I’m aware of) TNZ gone! Amazon gone! Now all we need is the two other billionaire bludgers to fuck off, first James Cameron and then the guy that shoulder tapped him, Peter Jackson. Taxpayers in NZ are dying ‘cos of lack of funding of Pharmac due to these bloodsuckers.

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