The Hobbit Production is in big trouble

[kennermike]

as a former actor I know all about actors unions please watch its very intresting. Im not a giant Lord Of the Rings fan but New Zealand is Middle Earth
The Hobbit Rally of Hope and Labor Dispute Videos - MovieWeb.com

[johnmiic]

Yeah, it's trouble but it will only be "big" trouble if the production moves elsewhere. Then a lot of New Zealanders will lose their jobs and other films will not go there.

Helen Kelly is trying to use the Hobbit as leverage to gain power and secure a deal. She wants a strike, (industrial action/boycott), to disrupt film 1 and/or film 2 of the Hobbit. She hopes the threat will scare the studio and force them to sign a contract guaranteeing certain things to the NZ actors, (fair treatment). Jackson and Boyens have stated publicly it's not up to the production to enter into negotiations. It is the wrong route to get a deal and sets a bad precedent. They have had meetings to try and work this out and Kelly and the Union declined to attend if they were not given the assurance they would get what they want.

A similar thing happened in NYC a few years ago when the union president of the MTA said he would make everyone strike just to get his demands from the Mayor and the City. The National Union said to him, "Do Not Strike!", and the jerk did it anyway. It was just to say to the Mayor look who has power over you.

Many actors and union members as well as regular people are rallying and marching in the streets in support of The Hobbit and want to keep the production going smoothly but Kelly will have none of it even disputing the number of people who were in the march in that clip. She has a tremendous disconnect with what the members really want.

I usually go to theonering.net for info.

Hobbit Movie News and Information, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien - TheOneRing.net - Forged by the Fans of J.R.R. Tolkien

Kelly: 'Sorry, Jackson is not a brat' - National - NZ Herald News

[Brazoo]

Interesting guys - thanks for the links and comments.

Sounds like growing pains of their industry too. With all the film production here, we've never had a multi-billion dollar franchise yet - I'm sure if there was a production on this scale someone would crawl out of the woodwork and try to politicize the situation or try to make a name for themselves.

I tried to keep an open mind when listening to both sides of the first post - but I couldn't side with Kelly - she really just comes across as a bullheaded bureaucrat. When she argued about the numbers of people protesting it's just so petty - and she certainly seems out of touch.

From what I recall Peter Jackson fought for producing the trilogy there in the first place. I just makes sense that using local talent would be a little cheaper than flying people in, and setting them up in hotels. Also, like Canada, it makes sense that productions would want to take tax breaks for using local talent. So usually productions come in and think of local talent purely in terms of convenience and cash - the weird thing in this case is that I think Peter Jackson is genuinely excited to work with locals.

I'm not even a LOTR fan, but I just think about how this kind of bureaucracy messes things up here and I get mad.