The New Zealand government has released 41 pages of previously
confidential documents relating to a 2010 attempt to unionize actors
Peter Jackson's
The Hobbit.
The documents offer an unusual glimpse behind the scenes of a nasty
public dispute that ended in a stinging defeat for the local actors
union -- and in a stunning outcome for the country’s government, which
ended up paying Warner Bros. an additional $25 million in tax incentives
and other fees to quell the threat that the production might be moved
to another country.
The government also pushed through legislation that effectively makes
it impossible to unionize motion picture production in the country.
The
document disclosure came in response to a Jan. 31
ruling by New Zealand’s ombudsman, a government official, who ordered the release over the objections of Warner Bros.’ New Line unit, director-producer
Jackson and two government ministers.
Many of the documents are emails between Jackson and Minister of Economic Development
Gerry Brownlee.
In one message, to the country’s attorney general, Jackson and his wife and producing partner,
Fran Walsh,
describe themselves as “not anti-union” and add that they are “very
proud and loyal members of three Hollywood Unions -- the Directors
Guild, the Producers Guild and the Writers Guild. We have always
supported the Screen Actors Guild.” (The Producers Guild is not actually
a union.)
But a couple weeks later, in an Oct. 15, 2010, email to Brownlee, Jackson denounces union organizer
Simon Whipp:
“He has played you like a fool. Unfortunately, you engaged with a
snake, who now feels quite fearless. He is in revenge mode, intent on
inflicting as much damage as he can, to our film, to our film industry,
to our country.”
Jackson also referred to the unionization effort as “toxic nonsense.”
Complicating the dispute from the start was the fact that the local
actors union, NZ Actors Equity, is a subsidiary of an Australian union,
the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance.
Jackson said, “In the end, this is not about Actors Equity, not is it about
The Hobbit.
It is about an Australian trade union making a blatant play to take a
controlling hand in the NZ film industry -- for their own political and
financial gain.”
Left unremarked by Jackson was the fact that Warner Bros. isn’t based in New Zealand, either.
In a statement this week, Jackson said he hoped the document release
would “put to rest the unfounded conspiracy theories that sought to
characterize these events as a Hollywood studio dictating terms to a
sovereign government -- a charge that is as spurious now as it was
then.”
That comment isn’t consistent with what played out in 2010, when Prime Minister
John Key said that Warners was asking for legislative change and additional money as a condition of keeping the
Hobbit shoot in New Zealand.
“I think it’s fair to say on the financial side there’s a fair bit of
hardball being played on both sides,” Key said at the time. He added,
“We have the capacity to move a little bit, but we don’t have the
capacity to write out checks that we can’t afford to cash.
“In the end,” he said then, “money talks in Hollywood. That’s just the way it works.”
In addition, Brownlee said at the time that he would meet with
Warners representatives when they arrived in New Zealand in order to
“see what their requirements might be.”
Nor was Warner Bros. the only studio pressuring the country’s
government. Another released document from 2010 -- a government memo not
Hobbit-related -- indicates that Disney “advised Film New
Zealand” that if Actors Equity did not change its procedures for
responding to requests for visas for foreign actors, “Disney is unlikely
to continue with plans to bring future productions to New Zealand.”
The
Hobbit unionization effort burst into public view in
September 2010. After quieter attempts to resolve matters had gotten
nowhere, NZ Actors Equity enlisted the assistance of an international
federation of actors unions, whose member unions -- including SAG, AFTRA
and U.S. Actors Equity -- slapped a “do not work” alert on the project
.
Jackson charged then that the union action risked driving the project out of the country, a stance he
reiterated shortly before the film’s world premiere about three months ago in Wellington.
NZAE vp
Phil Darkins disagreed. “When virtually
every performers union on the planet says, ‘We won’t sign on,’ where on
Earth are you going to take your production?” he said at a conference in
November.
Nonetheless, the affair ended with Warner Bros. extracting an
additional $25 million in incentives and advertising funds from the
island nation and securing emergency passage of anti-union legislation,
apparently negotiated directly between the government and key Warners
executives including New Line president
Toby Emmerich and Warner Home Entertainment president
Kevin Tsujihara, who becomes Warner Bros. CEO effective March 1.
The document requests were filed by NZ Council of Trade Unions president
Helen Kelly and
Brent Edwards of Radio New Zealand.
