New Zealand: Welcome to Middle-earth | kurier.at

It finally appeared as “Visions of 2001” two years later, marking its 20th anniversary on stage. For them, Gandalf recalls: “When I found out that director Peter Jackson was working on the film, I was skeptical at first. But after watching the first film, I was deeply impressed by how well he translated Tolkien’s world into great visuals. Combined with Howard Shore’s music, he managed Already from capturing the magic of the story. The largely untouched landscapes of New Zealand are sure to be the perfect setting for this movie.”

Although he has never visited New Zealand in person, he has read enough reports and reports about them to be able to imagine that everything is going well together: the fictional country of Middle-earth and the real New Zealand. Music composer Gandalf also read media reports criticizing that hundreds of film crew members left a huge pile of dung on the beautiful island.

It is likely that lawsuits of this nature will not be filed. Because Amazon announced in the summer that it would move the filming of the second season of the new “Lord of the Rings” series to Great Britain. A shock to those New Zealanders who are already used to serving as the backdrop to one of the world’s most successful film productions over the next few years. Because one must not forget: after all, 20,000 kiwis, as New Zealanders call themselves, have taken on larger and smaller additions in Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” and his “The Hobbit” trilogy in the past twenty years. Too much for a country of less than five million people.

If you want to visit a site that has made it into every part of The Lord of the Rings, you can’t go beyond the Matamata community in Oakland County. Here’s the Hobbiton movie village or “Hobbiton” with its many cute hobbit caves, the Zum Grünen Drachen’s inn, the windmill and the festival tree.

sheep more than people

On the way there you pass through the lush green hills of the Alexander family. She has been raising and raising sheep there for decades. According to legend, director Peter Jackson flew over the farm in search of a suitable movie over 20 years ago. It immediately became clear to him: this is exactly where Hobbiton is. The rest was done by film scouts, lawyers, and soldiers from the New Zealand Army.

After persuading farmers to leave their idyllic land to the film’s crew for a few months, the military built an access road and excavated dozens of caves for hobbit homes.

All this work was suspiciously pursued by the not-so-secret New Zealand masters, the Sheep. There are about 25 million of them, which is five times the number of people.

Not many graze on the Alexander family farm, of course, but about 13,500 animals. And they pretend since they saw the filming, like professionals when chasing visitors. And that’s what they’ve been doing since farmer Craig Alexander turned the set into a huge movie village for Tolkien fans.

The next mega event is just around the corner. On December 10, the twentieth anniversary of the premiere of “The Lord of the Rings” will be celebrated in Hobbiton. And so in fitting fashion with Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf – and plenty of sheep as spectators.