Talk about premature… Anyhow, it seems that the dispute with the Actor’s Union ends, and all is nice and dandy in the Middle-Earth again, and The Hobbit might actually get shot there. Official statement by the Screen Actors Guild states:
“Today, our sister union New Zealand Actors Equity issued a statement recommending all international performer unions rescind their member advisories on the feature film production The Hobbit. In light of this recommendation, Screen Actors Guild will be alerting its members that they are now free to accept engagements, under Screen Actors Guild contract terms and conditions, on The Hobbit.”
Warner playing rough ball on the actors seems to have worked. Yet, I’m not completely sure should we be happy for this? It’s good that the film gets done, yet it would’ve been interesting to see how different it would’ve been, had it been shot in Eastern Europe, and the job opportunities for European filmmakers would’ve been enormous. But now that it’s back in NZ, we’re going to be enjoying the breathtaking nature again. Still, I don’t know what kind of compromises this means to the actors? Are they suddenly being stomped under a huge production with big studios and Sauron wins, or was the dispute just some petty whining about some regulations and making things unnecessarily complicated for any filmmaker to be able to actually make a film there – I don’t know, since I didn’t ever consider this issue being interesting enough to really dig into it. Maybe I should have. Maybe I, one day, will.
Anyhow, the sun is now shining above Shire again, the Hobbits are smoking their big wooden pipes and wiggling their big hairy toes on its grassy hills. And somewhere, under the Lonely Mountain, the big dragon sleeps. But for how long?
Ted Nasmith: Green Hill Morning
