Amazon moves filming of 'Lord of the Rings' series from New Zealand to Britain

It almost seems like blasphemy...

Kinds of hard to go to NZ these days.

Come on, New Zealand!! Fight for this !! - The U.K. has many beautiful locales to film but because of Peter Jackson’s demonstrated success with LOTR, it seems like the variety of NZ landscapes are synonymous with Middle Earth.

After what the BBC did with Doctor Who, Sméagol may become less ‘pitiable’ and perhaps more “precious” ?

I really get disgusted reading about this vulgar corporate welfare, the rich can be real scumbags!!

Meanwhile the average man\woman have to pay the FULL COSTS!!!

UK doesn't have good location like New Zealand. All they have is coast and same town, same historic sites all over the country.

UK doesn't have good location like New Zealand

Err, ever been to Scotland?

Of course we have perfectly good locations in Britain! Or perhaps Amazon never thought of that? They obviously haven't got a clue what they are doing. If only they had you to advise them - then they might be successful!

“Separated at Birth?” - hilarious to see Sméagol also on the cover this morning, amongst the headlines. Caution: Once you “Google Images “Sméagol origin”, you will never look at some news the same way again.

Spent most of the budget on that superstar cast!

There are lots of New Zealanders that hated and fought against having so many foreigners on their soil. There is a strong isolationist faction there.

I wonder what happened to cause this move. It's costing them $33 million just in penalties, and that's not counting the cost of the move, after they were fully established in NZ. There must have been some pretty major issues to decide to make that change.

Boris is trying to make Brexit look good with sacks of public money, paying companies to stay in the UK. I'm sure Amazon got more cash from UK taxpayers than they are losing in NZ.

There was a report this week that a UK police force spent £14m on software they aren't going to use. Public money gets flushed into the pockets of outsourced private companies with wild abandon here. You think Nigeria is corrupt? Read 'Private Eye'. It's a good guide on how to extract taxpayer's cash via chums in high places.

Besides, Australia and NZ have too much quarantine and too many lockdowns to be viable for any major international projects. Europe held the Euros with crowds weeks ago but had to cancel the rugby because the Aussies and Kiwis wouldn't travel. They will still be doing their initial vaccinations at Christmas when Europe has completed 3rd booster shots for the vulnerable.

We have no regrets about giving this production our best shot with government support,

Well of course. Government is spending other people’s money, so why would you have regrets.

There is global collusion now to hike taxes on business, but perhaps there could be collusion on agreeing not to subsidize film productions? That would be better for taxpayers everywhere.

Good, preserve the natural ecology and get the hell out. It's not like some other LOTR films were made there already.

With NZ closed due to Covid restrictions it’s not surprising Amazon would choose to go elsewhere, and the UK has an old and established film and television industry. Scotland can easily replace NZ for location work.

Gonna suck either ways.

I'll stick with LOTR video games, thanks.