Braindead is a 1992 New Zealand zombie comedy splatter film directed by Peter Jackson, produced by Jim Booth, and written by Stephen Sinclair, Fran Walsh, and Jackson based on an original story idea by Sinclair. It stars Timothy Balme, Diana Peñalver, Elizabeth Moody and Ian Watkin. The plot follows Lionel, a young man living in South Wellington with his strict mother Vera. After Lionel becomes romantically entangled with a girl named Paquita, Vera is bitten by a hybrid rat-monkey creature and begins to transform into a zombie, while also infecting swathes of the city's populace.
Andrew Lesnie ACS ASC was an Australian cinematographer. He was best known as the cinematographer for The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) and its prequel The Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), both directed by New Zealand director Peter Jackson. He received the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in 2002.
The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy of epic fantasy adventure films directed by Peter Jackson, based on the novel The Lord of the Rings by British author J. R. R. Tolkien. The films are subtitled The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003). Produced and distributed by New Line Cinema with the co-production of WingNut Films, the films feature an ensemble cast including Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Christopher Lee, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Hugo Weaving, Andy Serkis, and Sean Bean.
Dame Frances Rosemary Walsh is a New Zealand screenwriter and film producer.
Philippa Jane Boyens is a New Zealand screenwriter who co-wrote the screenplay for The Lord of the Rings series, King Kong, The Lovely Bones, and the three-part film series The Hobbit.
Saul Zaentz was an American film producer and record company executive. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times and, in 1996, was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.
Middle-earth Enterprises, formerly known as Tolkien Enterprises, is a subdivision of the Embracer Freemode division of Embracer Group and formerly a trade name for a division of The Saul Zaentz Company. The subdivision owns the worldwide exclusive rights to certain elements of J. R. R. Tolkien's two most famous literary works: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. These elements include the names of characters contained within as well as the names of places, objects and events within them, and certain short phrases and sayings from the works.
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.
James William Arthur "Jamie" Selkirk is a film editor and producer who has worked primarily in New Zealand. He is particularly noted for his work on The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, which he co-produced with Peter Jackson. He received the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for the last film of the trilogy, The Return of the King (2003).
Christian Rivers is a New Zealand storyboard artist, visual effects supervisor, special effects technician, and director. He first met Peter Jackson as a 17-year-old, and storyboarded all of Jackson's films since Braindead. He made his directing debut in the film adaptation of Mortal Engines, and planning a remake of The Dam Busters, both produced by Peter Jackson.
Jed Brophy is an actor from New Zealand. He has appeared in several of Peter Jackson's films, including Braindead, Heavenly Creatures, The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, and King Kong. Brophy also appears as the dwarf Nori in The Hobbit films.
The production of The Lord of the Rings film series posed enormous challenges, both logistical and creative. Under Peter Jackson's direction, these obstacles were overcome between 1997 and 2004. Many attempts to produce J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings had failed; the few that had reached the screen were animations. Since the publication of the source novels in the mid-1950s, many filmmakers and producers had considered a film but then set the project aside. The series as filmed by Jackson consists of three epic fantasy adventure films. They were produced by New Line Cinema, assisted by WingNut Films. The cinema versions appeared between 2001 and 2003, and the extended edition for home video in 2004. Development began in August 1997. The films were shot simultaneously. Their production was undertaken entirely in Jackson's native New Zealand. It spanned the 14-month period from October 1999 until December 2000, with pick-up shots filmed over a further 24 months, from 2001 to 2003.
Tolkien tourism is a phenomenon of fans of Tolkien's fiction making media pilgrimages to sites of film- and book-related significance. It is especially notable in New Zealand, site of the movie trilogy by Peter Jackson, where it is credited as having raised the annual tourism numbers.
The Hobbit is a series of three epic high fantasy adventure films directed by Peter Jackson. The films are subtitled An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Desolation of Smaug (2013), and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). The films are based on the 1937 novel The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, with large portions of the trilogy inspired by the appendices to The Return of the King, which expand on the story told in The Hobbit, as well as new material and characters written especially for the films. Together they act as a prequel to Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
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 fourth-highest-grossing film director of all-time, his films having made over $6.5 billion worldwide.
Brian Sergent is an actor born and based in Wellington, New Zealand.
J. R. R. Tolkien's novels The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), set in Middle-earth, have been the subject of numerous motion picture adaptations, whether for film (cinema), television, or streaming. There were many early failed attempts to bring the fictional universe to life on screen, some even rejected by the author himself, who was skeptical of the prospects of an adaptation. While animated and live-action shorts were made in 1967 and 1971, the first commercial depiction of the book onscreen was in an animated TV special in 1977. In 1978 the first big screen adaptation of the fictional setting was introduced in the animated The Lord of the Rings.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a 2012 epic high fantasy adventure film directed by Peter Jackson from a screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Jackson, and Guillermo del Toro, based on the 1937 novel The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. It is the first installment in The Hobbit trilogy, acting as a prequel to Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Mortal Engines is a 2018 post-apocalyptic steampunk film directed by Christian Rivers from a screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson, based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Philip Reeve. It stars Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Hugo Weaving, Jihae, Ronan Raftery, Leila George, Patrick Malahide, and Stephen Lang. An American–New Zealand co-production, the film is set in a post-apocalyptic world where entire cities have been mounted on wheels and motorised, and practice municipal Darwinism; its movie universe is different from that of the books.
Dan Hennah is a production designer from New Zealand who worked on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films. He won an Oscar for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
