Two months left for King Kong ship...

The ship used by Peter Jackson for the movie King Kong is finally to be turned into a diving attraction, somewhere off the Wellington south coast.

The aging fishing vessel, originally named "Manuia" and built in the Netherlands in 1965, was bought for the King Kong production around 2004. It was heavily modified by the Weta Workshop to resemble an old 1890's ship, complete with smoke-stack. The original red/green colours were replaced with black, yellow and rust coloured paint, and the general shape was changed as well.

After the movie was completed, it stayed on the edge of the Miramar peninsula, where it's been moored ever since.

Now, word has it that the King Kong ship is finally going to be sunk, around mid February 2010. This has been widely expected for about three years now but the signs are pretty solid this time. Slowly, the ship is being stripped of all furnishings and non-sinkable items, and anything environmentally unfriendly. It is my expectation that it will be towed out to sea and scuttled somewhere near Wellington waters, to attract divers.

Before it's completely stripped, I hope to get a few choice souvenirs off it, if there's anything left - I know for instance that a lot of the external rivets on the hull exterior are fake, and would make great collectible items.

NB - the horizontal line of rivets is has a gap where the paint has flaked

off, taking the rivets with it - obviously glued on to the side.

Let me know if anyone is interested - I can't make any promises but I'll see what I can do!

  - Jack M

Update on casting call - READ THIS before you send your photos in...

While I've been hammering away on the look of the blog, here's been a few things happening here in Wellywood circles as well. By now you will have heard that a casting call has been announced by an American casting agency.

I'm not 100% convinced that it's all correct - the Actors Call address isn't at the studio, and the Extras Call address is different from the one I was given by Peter Jackson's office a few months ago. The few people I've spoken to in the last two days tell me their agents know nothing about any of this - you'd expect Wellington's own agencies to be in the loop before the internet announcements come through?


I will be contacting some people in the next few days to see if I can verify any of this officially, and I'll drop a note here. And on Twitter, and on Facebook!

For now though,make sure you send them only copies, so you can send them again when the call comes through from a NZ channel (for instance, your agents, or the Dominion Post). Kristin Thompson from The Frodo Franchise wrote a good article about how it all went the last time, during the King Kong days.


The best strategy as always : hope for a role, expect a rejection.

Hard hats please, heavy construction going on...

First of all I wanted to thank everyone for their great comments, suggestions and wellwishes. Positive criticism is always a huge energy boost, not to mention good for the ego!

As you can see I've been working hard on implementing some of the suggestions you've all given me. There's a button for adding me to your RSS reader (the +Google button), I've set up a Twitter feed (#nznoldor), and I'm currently working on Facebook as well, although that's proving to be a bit of a hassle.

I've never been a big fan of the Facebook look, but it's very useful for getting hold of people. So apart from my personal page, I've now set up a NZ Noldor page on it. You should be able to become a fan of it by clicking on one of the buttons on the right here.

I've tested everything as much as possible but let me know if anything doesn't work yet, I'll fix it as soon as possible.



  - Jack

Blog feedback wanted - how am I doing?

Hi y'all! Hope you're all enjoying my little corner of the blogosphere!

I just wanted to make a few things clear about the purpose of this blog. There seems to be no lack of Hobbit Rumours blogs around - I'm currently subscribed to about a half dozen or so. The big one of course is TheOneRing.net (or TORn, to the initiated). You may have noticed that I've put their headlines into the side bar of this page. I'd be a fool to try to compete with them, and that was never my intention.

However, I've noticed that most of the other blogs seem to delight in reposting TORn's items on their own pages. This seems a bit pointless to me, as I'm assuming that most Hobbit fans will already have a permanent link to TORn anyway, so the link (and soon after, the blog) just becomes noise in an already noisy world.




Which brings me to the purpose of my blog. My blog isn't a high-volume one. Sometimes I'll not hear anything interesting for a week or two, other times I'll suddenly have half a dozen items in one day. In general I try to only write about local Wellington related news that I've come across myself. I have a good network of spies out there, some of whom have little or no access to the internet (I know, who'd believe that!... ((you know who you are, B&M))) :)

I always copy my entries to TORn's spy report email address - sometimes they think it's worthy of spreading further; sometimes they don't. That's cool - I'm always honoured to be mentioned by them. However, since they don't always feature all my entries, it's worth adding my blog (or my RSS feed) to your newsfeeds, if you want to stay up-to-date with the latest local rumours and news. I'm fully expecting to have a big increase in cool news in the coming months - that's the whole reason I started writing them up in the first place!


I'd like to ask a favour of you all - can you tell me what else would you like to see? Should I add a Facebook group you can become a fan of? A twitter feed? A usable email address? Something else? Leave me a quick message here with suggestions - I'd love to hear from you!


One request I've often had from my tour guests is why I don't sell t-shirts or other merchandise, either on the tour or here online. Simply put, I've generally concentrated on being a tourguide rather than becoming a retailer, and let's face it, there's already plenty of online shops to choose from.

Having said that, I've recently been playing on zazzle.com, and I've designed a basic t-shirt that I think looks quite cool. Would there be any interest in stuff like this? Do you like this one? Do you think it's the most awful design you've ever seen? Should I stick to guiding and blogging? Don't hold back! Tell me!

Get off the road, Wellington, NZ by NZNoldor

I often have access to local items that Weta Cave can't sell online for legal reasons (some of the LOTR related stuff can't be sold outside of NZ - please don't ask me for a legal explanation but that's what they've told me). I'm quite happy to buy off Weta Cave at their retail prices and pass them on to anyone out there, if there's interest in that. For instance, they've just started selling an ultra cool Sauron t-shirt designed by Daniel Falconer that they can't sell online - let me know if anyone is interested in one.

One cool shirt - it's just under $nz50.

Get in touch if you're keen on one

(I'll add a small fee for p&p and my time).

The floor is open - let me know your thoughts!

  - Jack M.

The Hobbit location in Upper Hutt's Harcourt Park?

This just in - I've just heard from a very reliable source that Upper Hutt will be overrun by a large film crew, come February 2010. My source mentioned it would probably be in the vicinity of Harcourt Park, which was of course the location for the gardens of Isengard, where Gandalf arrives on his horse and tells Saruman that he's found the One Ring.

Harcourt Park is a very green park full of grass, trees and shrubs, and was primarily used in LOTR to give Isengard a "cultured, English garden" look. I'm having a hard time picturing it as anything other than Isengard. The only Hobbit location I can think of would be Beorn's house, but that's just speculation, of course.

Technically, Isengard doesn't appear in The Hobbit book, although if the script includes the White Council sequences as widely reported, then we may yet see a return to the tower of Orthanc during the time that Saruman is still a good guy.

There is another possibility - Upper Hutt was also used for various river locations, notably the River Anduin and the scene where Brego rescues Aragorn from the (unnamed) Middle-earth river. There are a few rivers in The Hobbit story, so it might be a completely different location altogether.


If the crew arrives as early as February, they must be building quite a significant filmset, given that Peter Jackson has just announced that filming won't begin until mid 2010. To put that in perspective - Rivendell took almost three months to build, and Edoras took almost eight months. Helms Deep and Minas Tirith took about two months each. If they start building in Upper Hutt in February, and filming doesn't begin until June, that might be quite a major set by the time they're done!


Anyone have any thoughts? Please leave them below!

- Jack M.

Hobbits living in Upper Hutt?

A few months ago we visited Gandalf Crescent in Paraparaumu, while on a tiki-tour around the region on my birthday (my 29th, if you like). My lovely wife Aiko just celebrated her birthday as well (by a staggering coincidence, she's also 29 again), and as luck would have it, we'd found another Tolkien reference on the local map, this time in Upper Hutt (Silverstream). What with us both being rings-geeks, we just can't stand knowing that there's a place out there that we haven't visited yet, so off we went.

Upper Hutt was used quite extensively for the filming of various locations - apart from the studios in the suburb of Taita, Isengard's gardens can be found in Harcourt Park, the Hutt River was used for at least three scenes (River Anduin, River Isen, and an unnamed scene where Brego rescues Aragorn), and of course Rivendell is located in the Upper Hutt Regional Park of Kaitoke. And, again apart from the Taita studios, we visit them all on the fullday tours (commercial plug!).

However, the location for today wasn't used for the movie - it's another local street with a great name: Hobbit Lane.

Unlike Gandalf Crescent, this one looks a bit more established, so it wouldn't at all surprise me if it existed before the movie was made.




As you can see from the map below, it's a small cull-de-sac (which is actually anglo-french for "Bag End", curiously) off a main road in the back of the suburb, nicely against the side of the hill, surrounded by trees and shrubs. Again, as with Gandalf Crescent, there don't appear to be any other LOTR related names in the neighbourhood either.



View Hobbit Lane on larger map



Once again, I am not sure about the details of how it got it's name, so if you have more detail, or have suggestions on where I could start looking, please let me know!


Got anything better? Drop me a line!


- Jack M.

John Howe autograph session at the Weta Cave Sunday Dec 6th

It looks like John Howe is taking a day away from designing Smaug the Magnificent, and will be releasing his new books, Lost Worlds and Fantasy Drawing Workshop, at the Weta Cave next Sunday. He'll be autographing them for all comers from 1:00pm onwards, until about 3:00pm.

If the session is anything like last time though, it may well last a bit longer - John Howe is a very popular artist these days so if you want to meet this amazing man, be sure to arrive early rather than late!

If you have other books with his illustrations in them, bring them along, he signed my collection of Middle-earth maps last time (thanks again Mr Howe!). In fact I expected him to sign the inside cover but he signed all the maps individually!

For more information on John Howe, check out his IMDB page, or else the Weta Workshop website has more details as well.


As an aside, since I'm often in a postition to buy cool stuff that may not be available online, would anyone outside of the Wellington region be interested in me buying for them, and passing it on for a nominal fee (to cover things like packing and shipping)?

For instance, the Weta Cave is unable to send some LOTR related items to other countries for licensing reasons, however I could buy from them as a normal customer and send them on.

Leave me a note here if there is a general interest? I'm sure I can find some sort of mechanism to facilitate it, eg, PayPal or something.

  - Jack

Second Hobbit location confirmed?

It looks like the second location (after Matamata's Hobbiton) has been leaked by the NZ Department of Conservation - Lake Wakatipu, according to the Otago Daily Times, who interviewed DOC's Wakatipu area manager Greg Lind.

However, Wingnut Films (Peter Jackson's company) is denying any such deal at this stage. Then again, they'd say that in either case, so asking them is like asking the CIA who killed JFK; the answer isn't necessarily going to sway anybody.

I've been trying to get hold of the folks looking after Rivendell (Kaitoke Regional Park, just north of Wellington) but so far they've not heard anything yet. Watch this space!

There is one thing that I've been more than a little curious about. So far, we know two things about the Hobbit movie. First, we know that the Hobbiton set is already being rebuilt in Matamata. Second, we know that the project hasn't had the greenlight from Hollywood yet. So, the question I have is this - who is paying for the refurbishment of Hobbiton - is PJ so assured of success that he's funding that himself? Questions like that leave me feeling very positive about the future!


For the full Otago Daily Times article, read here.

  - Jack M.

Update - "Lovely Bones" Red Carpet moved to the 14th of Dec

Only a few days ago I was reporting that this event was supposed to take place on Friday the 11th of December, only to find out today that they've gone and changed it to the 14th of Dec (Monday).


Wotzon has changed it on their site, and TV3's website is also reporting the new date. However, I've just spoken to the staff at The Embassy Theatre and they weren't 100% sure if that date had been set in concrete yet.


I'm guessing we'll keep our ears to the ground for more details! The TV3 article did say there would be stars, and chances for autographs.

  - Jack M.

"Lovely Bones" Red Carpet Parade & Greg Broadmore autographs

It's been a little while since the last entry - rest assured I haven't stopped blogging but I've simply not heard anything juicy enough to warrant an entry!

On top of that we've finally moved house, and that's kept us plenty busy here as well. I'm no longer living smack in the middle of the capital but just outside it, in one of the suburbs (Johnsonville). Where we were living under the shadow of a hill before we now enjoy an all-day sunshine and a view of miles and miles of farmlands from the top of a hill. There's also a bit more space for me to spread my LOTR collection around a bit more, and put a few old posters back up that I haven't seen for a few years. Yay!

Wellywood is very quiet at the moment, by which I don't mean that nothing is happening, just that nobody is talking much. I heard that there is going to be a central city red carpet parade for the opening of James Cameron's Avatar but it now appears that the parade is for Peter Jackson's Lovely Bones instead. Date is the 11th of December, according to Wotzon. Details are yet to be confirmed though.

The other event coming up this week - two events actually - is the release of Greg Broadmore's new Dr Grordbort book, simply entitled "Victory" (the last one was "Doctor Grordborts Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory" - do I get a prize for typing that correctly without spellchecking it?).

Among the many cool things Broadmore has designed are a number of awesome rayguns (the ManMelter is still my favourite, although I see the Atomiser has now come out as a miniature!). He'll be signing the new book for all comers on Friday the 20th and on Sunday the 22nd, at the Weta Cave. I might just bring along my three mini-guns as well.


I'm having a few meetings with a few contacts this week, hopefully I'll have some actual news to report on the Hobbit fronts...!

  - Jack M.