Meet the Feebles is a 1989 New Zealand puppet musical black comedy film directed by Peter Jackson, and written by Jackson, Fran Walsh, Stephen Sinclair and Danny Mulheron. It features Jim Henson-esque puppets in a perverse comic satire. Like Henson's Muppets, the Feebles are animal-figured puppets who are members of a stage troupe. However, whereas the Muppets characterize positivity, naïve folly and innocence, the Feebles largely present negativity, vice and other misanthropic characteristics. It is the first Jackson film that was co-written by his future partner Fran Walsh, who has gone on to act as co-writer for all his subsequent films.
Wētā Workshop is a special effects and prop company based in Miramar, Wellington, in New Zealand, that produces effects for television and film. The company is named after the New Zealand wētā, one of the world's largest insects.
James Oliver Cromwell is an American actor and activist. Some of his best-known films include Babe (1995), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), L.A. Confidential (1997), The Green Mile (1999), The Queen (2006), Secretariat (2010), The Artist (2011), and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018).
Dame Frances Rosemary Walsh is a New Zealand screenwriter and film producer.
Alex Dimitriades is an Australian actor and DJ. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Nick Polides in the 1993 romantic comedy film The Heartbreak Kid, and Nick Poulos in the 1994 television teen drama spin-off Heartbreak High.
Fane Michael Flaws was a New Zealand musician, songwriter, and artist.
Tony Backhouse is a singer, musician and composer from New Zealand and is a key player in the Australasian a cappella movement. He played in New Zealand bands such as The Crocodiles, and formed Australian a cappella groups, the Elevators, the Cafe of the Gate of Salvation, the Honeybees and the Heavenly Lights. In NZ, he formed the Napier Gospel Choir. Currently he lives in Sydney and works as a singer, composer, author and workshop leader, in the areas of vocal arranging and gospel music. He composes and arranges mainly for a cappella choirs, always with an ear to vernacular traditions – contemporary funk, African choirs, gospel – and to anything polyphonic. Works that typify his style are Jubilation and (I've Been Given) Two Wing as sung by the Café of the Gate of Salvation.
Arthur Baysting was a New Zealand writer, producer and children's advocate. He lived in Auckland with his partner, artist Jean Clarkson. They have two grown children.
Ramon Rivero is an animation director, digital puppeteer and computer animator best known for his work on the 2001 film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
Stuart Forbes Devenie is a New Zealand actor and theatre director, whose career spans three decades on stage and screen. He has performed in theatre productions nationally and internationally. In the 1980s, he was the artistic director of Centrepoint Theatre in Palmerston North and has been a senior educator at Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School. In 2000, he founded Playfair Ltd theatre company.
Bret Peter Tarrant McKenzie is a New Zealand musician, comedian, music supervisor, and former actor. He is best known as one half of musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords along with Jemaine Clement. In the 2000s, the duo's comedy and music became the basis of a BBC radio series and then an oft-lauded American television series, which aired for two seasons on HBO. Active since 1998, the duo released their most recent comedy special, Live in London, in 2018.
Mark Selwyn Hadlow is an Australian-New Zealand actor and comedian. Hadlow is perhaps best known internationally for playing the roles of Harry in King Kong and Dori, a Dwarf, in The Hobbit series.
Peter Mochrie, is an Australian actor whose career spans over forty years in the industry. His love of acting started at the age of 13 when he appeared in a play at Knox Grammar School (NSW), where he completed his schooling in 1976. He is also a producer of Fine Films and Profiles, presenter, teacher of 'The Art of Presenting on Camera' and an auctioneer for McGrath Estate Agents.
Danny Mulheron is a New Zealand actor, writer, and director who has worked in theatre, television and film.
Sir Peter Robert Jackson is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known as the director, writer and producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) and the Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), both of which are adapted from the novels of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien. Other notable films include the critically lauded drama Heavenly Creatures (1994), the horror comedy The Frighteners (1996), the epic monster remake film King Kong (2005), the World War I documentary film They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) and the documentary The Beatles: Get Back (2021). He is the third-highest-grossing film director of all-time, his films having made over $6.5 billion worldwide.
Paul McLaughlin is a New Zealand actor who won the Cloud 9 award for Actor of the Year in 2004. He works out of Wellington, New Zealand, where he lives with his wife—singer, foley-artist and actress, Carrie McLaughlin.
Peter Salmon is a New Zealand based film and television writer/director.
Stephen Sinclair is a New Zealand playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He is the co-author of stage comedy Ladies Night. In 2001, the French version won the Molière Award for stage comedy of the year. Other plays include The Bellbird and The Bach, both of which are prescribed texts for Drama Studies in New Zealand secondary schools.
Peter Hobbs BMus is a New Zealand screen composer and musician. He has scored soundtracks for films, television, commercials, art installations, and contemporary dance works. He also fronts the band Lost Demos.
Jonathan Peter Zwartz is a New Zealand-born Australian jazz musician. In the 2018 ARIA Music Awards, he won the Best Jazz Album category for his third album, Animarum, released in 2018.
