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               The Hobbit Controversy

Don’t you think its annoying when a small group of people don’t like something, they cause mayhem? In this case, it’s the Actors Equity Union stopping work because they don’t agree with how much they get paid for the work they have done on the Hobbit film. It costs the government money, it is costing jobs for the average Joe and giving the rest of the country a bad name.

The controversy stops work and costs money. Because the members of the union do not think they are getting enough money they go ahead and stop working. If conflicts can not be resolved, the production company will move the film off-shore. Meaning, the country could lose around 1.5 billion dollars and some credibility in the film industry if the Hobbit film leaves New Zealand.

The government has to fork out tax payer money. Since the union has caused this raucous, the production company ‘Warner Bros’ has questioned New Zealands reliability to make the Hobbit films. To keep the films here, the government has had to make million dollar deals with Warner Bros. Plus move funds (tax payer money) to improve New Zealands competitiveness as a large budget films destination.

What does the rest of the world think of us? This problem brings to

question how reliable New Zealands actors will be for future developments. Questioning whether other films will be in jeopardy, if they are filmed here. This problem sprung to life by the Actors Equity union could jeopardise the filming of other movies on our rugged shores. Directors and production companies could easily take New Zealand out of the equation when choosing to film somewhere. Instead of our beautiful country, they could choose to film somewhere like Scotland which has a very similar landscape to us. If there are no films being produced here, then we are going to lose out on millions of dollars.

So in the end if we are not having films made here we lose out on more than just money. We lose out on respect in the film industry, we lose out on tourism, and we lose out on the pride of saying “that was made here”. With these problems our government would then have to cash in on tax payer money, to improve our image. Which would spark debates about careless funding by our government, that would then snow-ball into more problems. But all of this could easily be avoided by people doing what they are suppose to do.