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.
“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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“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.
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.
As a writer and film industry locations scout I can safely say that AO/NZ’s film industry is an egomaniacs plaything.
The Film Business can be divided into two very distinct halves.
One half is the creative side. It’s the writers, directors and cast.
The other side is production and I can tell you with no small amount of certainty that the devil’s in production.
Production is where every side winding, lizard lipped, swindling, lying, scam merchant in the film business can be found.
Anyone can make a great film using a great story once having scripted it by great script writers then have a great director to bring the whole thing alive then shoot it on cell phones clamped to selfie sticks for a few hundi.
The rest? The millions? Well, that’s production. It’s all coke and mirrors baby.
AO/NZ? You’ve been scammed suckers.
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.
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!
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?
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.
Martyn
You say Stuart Nash is unable to explain why he didn’t cement into place season 2. Yep, aren’t these Labour ministers just brilliant at doing business. That cause they spent sooooo many years working business. It’s sign off the budget, wash hands and onto the Chardonnay.
Business is business, you should know that… box office success is political success, as evidenced by Hollywood during WW2.
NOW, … what has LOTR to do with what agenda?
I’m not sure Stuart Nash understands the meaning of success, given the total failure of his “successful” gun buyback. Maybe someone should buy him a dictionary with the definition highlighted. Pretty much every portfolio he’s touched has been plagued with failure.
It is interesting/amusing how many commentators are, without any facts available in the public arena, quick to accuse the Government for Holywood taking the filming of the next series away. Maybe, just maybe, could it be that Holywood has been able to screw more money out of someone else?
Right from the start these film subsidies where tainted with the flavour of corporate welfare.
This Government tries very hard to keep the relevant facts out of the public arena (banning of Tarrant’s video & manifesto, suppressing evidence in the Royal Commission of Inquiry for 30 years etc), so all we are left with is their lies & propaganda, thus we must rely on speculation, supposition and draw our own conclusions. Of course the Government could be more transparent and stop hiding behind “commercial sensitivity”, “operational decisions” & “privacy concerns”. With this issue, money is likely to be the main deciding factor, but we are very unlikely to get the real story behind the decision to relocate.
Housing is the only “my precious” in lala land.
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.
Yes one could say that, but Tolkien was also a proponent of the ancient mystery religions, – or at least , – had a working knowledge of them…sit back for an hour , make a coffee and grab a load of this :
SC EP:112 Nephilim Conspiracy
https://youtu.be/UDD2Awj88UY?t=2
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.
Our wonderful country, that can be replicated in no other land tainted by ongoing thousand year long bloodsheds, we are a modern example to the rest of the world despite our failures. No one can match that. So take it to the U.K, … we know the truth.
Lord of the rings 3
https://youtu.be/w4fYBTa6b54?t=1
Peter Hobbit Jackson will be piss’n in his pants with laughter!
He’ll be saying to Fran!” Fuck that Bozo off ay Fran! This is our turf!”
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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