‘Hobbit’ co-writer says New Zealand about to lose filming rights
By ANIThursday, October 21, 2010
WELLINGTON - The co-writer of ‘The Hobbit’, Philippa Boyens, has said that despite the best efforts of the film’s producers, the movie is slipping away from New Zealand.
The producers of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ prequel had overnight issued a statement saying preparations were being made to move the film offshore.
Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh said industrial action by NZ Actors’ Equity and Australian union Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance had “undermined Warner Brothers’ confidence in New Zealand as a stable employment environment”.
Boyens and the film co-producer Fran Walsh later delivered a stark assessment of the production’s future to National Radio.
“We can literally feel it slipping through our hands. We’ve had it. We’ve fought as hard as we can. We are in a situation where we are fighting to save it,” the New Zealand Herald quoted her as saying.
“Unfortunately it feels to us like this conversation is already done. We don’t know how far we have to go to retrieve the situation,” she stated.
Walsh said the film’s loss would be an “absolute tragedy”, and that delay in shooting as the result of industrial action had already lost the studio millions of dollars. (ANI)
