The Hobbit comes home to England

I wish I had time to do this justice, but I have been very, very busy the past couple of weeks. Suffice to say that after weeks of legal nattering and haggling, the New Zealand Actors Equity lost its bid for illegally influencing the financial structure of payrolls on Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” — and in the process may have poisoned the international film and television industry against working in New Zealand again, at least for a very long time. I suspect that a change in leadership at New Zealand Actors Equity could remedy that situation, but perhaps nerves will be too jittery to trust a big budget production to New Zealand again for a long, long time.

Nonetheless, fans of Peter Jackson and “The Lord of the Rings” will be pleased to note that Warner Brothers (the last holdout in the complex negotiations to bring the two “Hobbit” films to production) finally gave its greenlight — and in the process persuaded Jackson to move the production to Leavesdon Studios in Watford, Herefordshire, where all 8 Harry Potter movies have been filmed.

The Daily Mail broke the story and provides a little more insight.

TheOneRing.net ran a cast breakdown earlier this week (they have posted several individual updates since then).

We have a concise list of Hobbit Cast Names in the SF-Fandom Middle-earth Movies forum.

So what this means is that filming should begin as scheduled in February (hooray!) but how much the “Hobbit” Middle-earth will look like the LoTR Middle-earth is anyone’s guess. Weta Digital can certainly work a lot of magic, but since the story takes place largely in a different area anyway, does that matter? I think not.

At least now viewing audiences will have an opportunity to see remnants of the landscapes that may have inspired Tolkien (it seems that every town in England tries to lay claim to part of the Tolkien legacy).