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Film News

THE HOBBIT Has A Green Light And A Start Date. Now It Just Needs A Location.

by Todd Brown, October 16, 2010 6:58 AM


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The Hobbit drama is almost over. After months of speculation the movie is finally set to go ahead with all parties involved officially giving the two Hobbit pictures the green light with a start date of February 2011 and Peter Jackson now officially signed on to direct. What it doesn't have, though, is a firm shooting location. The goal has always been to shoot in New Zealand but with the Screen Actors Guild and local New Zealand actors' unions boycotting the production they may be forced to move elsewhere to get around the union SNAFU. Either that or they could, you know, pay the people they hire an appropriate wage. Given that Jackson had to sue New Line to receive his full compensation and residuals for The Lord Of The Rings I'm frankly pretty surprised that he is now knowingly involved in a production that is looking to short its actors on those same fronts.

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3 Comments

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by fallback, October 17, 2010 10:45 AM

Wow, I'm disappointed and appalled at how many poor assumptions are embedded in those last two sentences. While the current debacle going on re: actors and THE HOBBIT is a complex situation, the above goes beyond showing no comprehension and moving into straight out character assassination. I mean, even Actors' Equity (which isn't an officially registered union, and may not be legally entitled to represent actors even if it was) now claims the boycott (which they also claim isn't a boycott, all available evidence to the contrary) isn't primarily about pay, but about working conditions. Like nudity. Because, you know, there's a lot of that expected in THE HOBBIT.

That should give you an idea of how complicated and absurd the situation is - that doesn't even get into the question of why they've been trying to use THE HOBBIT to bash out an industry-wide agreement whilst refusing to meet with the organization responsible for representing producers nationally, or the involvement of the Australian union MEAA that were the original agitators, possibly in part to move THE HOBBIT to Australia - but for a lot more detail, Russell Brown's blog articles are a good summary, and the lengthy discussions that follow include comments from lots of NZ film professionals, including UNDER THE MOUNTAIN director Jonathan King.

http://publicaddress.net/default,6867,hobbit-wars.sm#post6867
http://publicaddress.net/6875

And a lengthy interview with producer Phillippa Boyens, which should give a bit of perspective from their standpoint.

(And I don't even freaking CARE about THE HOBBIT, other than that I think NZ is a great place to make films, I want my friends who work in the industry not to have to lose their jobs and suffer on account of whatever misguided decisions made THE HOBBIT a punching bag, and I don't want a dubious dust-up to give the country and/or its most prominent and successful director/producer a permanent black eye on the international radar. Thankfully, via government mediation it appears the appropriate parties may, finally, be talking.)

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Todd Brown replied to comment from fallback, October 18, 2010 6:49 PM

No assumptions here. When the SAG got involved in this one of their stated reasons for imposing the Do Not Work order was that the contracts being offered by the producers included residual rates well below the accepted norms. Which means anyone who works on the films under these contracts will be shorted on what the SAG considers to be their fair share of the DVD / BluRay / VOD sales down the line.

When Jackson sued New Line it was because - at least in part - they were using dodgy accounting practices to skew the books so that it would appear that he was owed less in residuals than he really was. i.e. they were shorting him out of his share of DVD / BluRay / VOD sales. It's the exact same issue, the only difference being that The Hobbit is at least being up front in their intention to not properly compensate.

Are there more issues at play here and more things that need to be addressed in the contracts? Sure there are. But that makes things WORSE, not better, in my opinion. And if they don't resolve the underlying issues moving shop out of New Zealand and then offering the same basic deals won't change a thing - the SAG will keep their Do Not Work order in place and Jackson basically won't be able to work with a single actor who has a US agent or profile worth a damn.

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fallback replied to comment from Todd Brown, October 20, 2010 3:53 AM

SAG's Do Not Work order stems from MEAA's initial advisory, which was exclusively in regards to the residual issue for non-union actors (which all NZ actors are, except to the extent NZ Actors' Equity can be counted as a union). The attached background documents make it clear that this was entirely motivated by the treatment of non-unionized NZ actors, although some of the statements have since been taken out of context in other forums to make it appear that The Hobbit was not going to comply with SAG standards for residuals.

This is false. As Peter Jackson made amply clear in his initial reply to that order, whether or not he would meet the SAG residual requirements has never been in question - in his words:

"MEAA claims we are "non-Union", but whenever we hire an actor who belongs to SAG, we always honour their working conditions, their minimum salary agreements and their residuals."

To the best of my knowledge, this statement has never been rebutted.

As for the NZ actors, despite having no requirements to create a residual pool, Warner Bros agreed to create a separate residual pool for The Hobbit, which would have been a step forward for New Zealand actors, even if the residuals didn't match those of their SAG brethren (just as their salaries don't). This would have been groundbreaking. Instead, we have the situation we have today.

So, yeah: the only issue really is New Zealand actors, and the cleanest solution at this point, from the studio's perspective, would be to not shoot in New Zealand, as it should be relatively matter to get the Do Not Work order lifted if the aggrieved parties aren't being employed on the production anymore.

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