All things New Zealand[ish]: King Kong, Lord of the Rings and Narnia

I would first like to say hello to family in Christchurch. Hello.

So New Zealand, what's going on? You're a busy little country on the international movie scene aren't you. What have you been up to?

King Kong - A sneak peek from the upcoming King Kong Deluxe Extended Edition DVD will be introduced by a message from director Peter Jackson at [ComicCon] on Friday, July 21st. And a report came out yesterday that it was given a grant of $48.65M from the government's large budget screen production fund. That must be nice. You're guaranteed a massive return on your investment already because you've just recently turned out one of the greatest and successful trilogys of all time and you get some money back that came out of taxpayer's pockets. Yes, lovely indeed. Sure, it beats paying grants out to struggling artists to paint canvasses with their own feces but that must sting a bit.

Chronicles of Narnia - It is also getting the Extended Edition treatment with a 4 disc DVD set. It too will preview unseen footage from the upcoming DVD at [ComicCon]. Viewers will watch scenes from the director’s cut of the film and hear some exciting details about the release. Oh, and they got a grant of $16.7M based on their expenditures. I don't know if something that is a sure bonafied hit should get money like this. It doens't bode well.

Lord of the Rings - New Line Cinema is re-releasing the three movies on DVD in August [?] and each disc is to contain a feature length documentary by Wellington film-maker Costa Botes. Botes had unprecedented access to the entire production as early as one year before production began shooting 800 hours of tape. They were not polished or glamorized docs unlike the American docs already featured on previous releases. Only the first documentary on The Fellowship of the Ring hase been seen publicly. It was screened at the Wellington and Auckland film festivals in 2004. The three have never been released.

Sadly though New Line has seen fit to edit the docs, cutting scenes from each of them. "I had no opportunity to take part in this at all. They just shut me out completely. Once they figured out what they wanted to do, there was no opportunity to argue for any of the cuts and no opportunity to correct some really silly things that were done. It would have been nice to have been consulted because I could have actually finessed those things." Scenes cut included extras dressed as orcs singing Stand By Me. Botes said New Line's reason was it did not want to pay for the rights to use the song. It also cut parts in which music was blaring from radios at Wellington special effects company Weta. Shots showing the top of Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe, near where some filming took place, had also been removed. Botes said he was not aware of any agreement between New Line and iwi to not show the top of the volcanoes in his documentaries. "I can understand the Maori attitude to avoiding depiction of the peaks in the film ... but what have we come to?" Botes said he understood why cuts had been made where cast and crew were swearing. He said New Line owned the footage, and the changes were not significant enough to warrant his asking for his name to be taken off the credits. He was still proud of his films, but wanted audiences to remember that they were not exactly how he intended them to be.

[LOTR source, Grant source, ComicCon source]