Peter Jackson's Own Hollywood in New Zealand

John Key, the prime minister of New Zealand, already has circled Nov. 28 on his calendar. That's when Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will have its world premiere in Wellington. The city plans to spend $900,000 on festivities surrounding the occasion, but the whole country has reason to applaud Jackson, who has put New Zealand on the map as a production center with a growing infrastructure. James Cameron is among the filmmakers who have gone to Weta Digital for extensive visual effects work on big films, and the government estimated Avatar contributed $218 million to the economy. That's primarily just for effects, and Key says "it's very hard to know" what the full economic impact of the Hobbit movies will be, "but … there are obviously hundreds of millions of dollars being spent in New Zealand." Perhaps more: When Jackson flirted with taking The Hobbit to Europe to thwart labor organizers in New Zealand, the country's largest bank, ANZ-National, estimated that the loss to the economy would be as high as $1.5 billion. Add in the hundreds of people employed at Jackson's facilities in suburban Miramar, and it's clear his footprint on New Zealand is very large indeed.