Latest in New Zealand Actor’s Equity

Warner Bros and Peter Jackson next week will try to hash out whether the $500 million budget for back-to-back The Hobbit films will stay in New Zealand or move elsewhere. Meetings are planned that will involve Prime Minister John Key. Here’s a terrific dispatch from New Zealand Close Up: it’s long but is well worth it…

New Line has weighed in on The Hobbit, adding doubt that the Warner Bros-financed pictures will shoot in New Zealand even though actors guilds have lifted their boycott. I still think that Peter Jackson is so staked in New Zealand with his sound stages and visual effects operations that he won’t shoot elsewhere, but…

UPDATE: There’s still unease even though SAG and AFTRA rescinded the order to stop its actor members from working on The Hobbit because of a request from sister union New Zealand Actors Equity. The labor settlement doesn’t mean Peter Jackson will move the pictures back to the New Zealand locations that are home to…

SAG & AFTRA Nix Non-Union ‘The Hobbit’ For Kiwi & Oz Actors Peter Jackson Slaps Back At Kiwi/Oz Unions New Line, Warner Bros. Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures are concerned by the recent allegations of unfair treatment of actors in New Zealand and instructions from the performers' guilds to their membership…

An angry Peter Jackson today is fighting back at a “Member Alert” that went out Friday afternoon from the Screen Actors Guild advising actors not to accept work on the non-union production of The Hobbit. It’s part of an international showbiz labor effort begun by New Zealand Actors’ Equity and its umbrella The Media…

BREAKING NEWS: Peter Jackson Slaps Back At Kiwi/Oz/Hollywood Unions UPDATE: A “Member Alert” went out yesterday afternoon from the Screen Actors Guild advising actors not to accept work on the non-union production of The Hobbit. (See below.) It’s part of an international showbiz labor effort begun by New Zealand…