Return of the King notes that Peter Jackson has been publishing video “Production Diaries” of his work on King Kong at Kongisking.net.
It also notes that Peter Jackson has lost his hobbit-belly; he’s lost 70 pounds in the last year.
In addition to working on the movie directly, Jackson is building his movie-making empire:
He is also the sole overseer of a rapidly expanding movie empire. Wellywood, as it’s known to Jackson groupies, encompasses some 1,300 crew members, 7,500 cast members and extras, and hundreds of thousands of square feet of facilities, including soundstages, a motion-capture studio, a props and costume shop, and an antique airplane factory — all scattered across block after block of the Wellington suburbs. When you hire Jackson to direct a movie, Kamins says, “you’re making a deal with a biosphere. With a community.”The centerpiece of Jackson’s empire is the Weta Workshop, the 65,000-square-foot facility on the site of a former water park outside Wellington. Named after a prehistoric cockroachlike insect indigenous to New Zealand, Weta is an umbrella company encompassing the workshop proper, the f/x shop, and a merchandise company. Lord of the Rings veteran Elijah Wood has called Weta Workshop “Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but without the candy.”
I was wondering what “Weta” meant…