By Kate Rodger
Sir Peter Jackson joined Prime Minister John Key today to announce the first of the two Hobbit movies will premiere in Wellington in late November next year.
Sir Peter says the positive reaction to the Wellington premiere of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was a factor in Warner Bros’ decision to host the Hobbit premiere here.
“No-one in the international industry could quite believe how the country got behind that,” he says.
The set for the Shire will become a permanent tourist attraction in Matamata once filming has finished and the cast and crew have hit the road for seven weeks of filming on location throughout New Zealand.
The Lord of the Rings was an enormous tourism drawcard, and both Mr Key and Sir Peter are confident the Hobbit will bring in more tourist dollars.
Even Sir Peter was taken aback by the natural beauty of the South Island, which he hadn’t seen a lot of before filming Lord of the Rings.
“[The South Island] is just the most unbelievably beautiful place, so we are shooting in quite a few places that are completely different,” he says.
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