"I don’t know if Peter Jackson knows"
(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)
Taika Waititi has revealed the source of What We Do in the Shadow’s green screens and timber – they were stolen from the set of the second Hobbit movie. Both movies were filmed in New Zealand and were released a year apart, in 2013 and 2014 respectively.
“When I did What We Do in the Shadows, when Jemaine [Clement, the movie’s co-director, co-writer, and star] and I were shooting that, we didn’t have much money to do that film, and The Hobbit had just wrapped,” Waititi said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (opens in new tab). “And, so, our production designer – man, I don’t know if I should tell this. Okay, but I will – our production designer, in the dead of night, took his crew to The Hobbit studios and stole all of the dismantled, broken-down green screens and took all of the timber, and we built a house.”
The director added: “I had never talked to [The Hobbit director] Peter Jackson about this. I don’t know if he knows. I like telling it at parties, that story. But I don’t know if he actually knows.”
What We Do in the Shadows had a budget of $1.6 million compared to The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’s $200 million. Waititi and Clement’s vampire mockumentary follows a group of four bloodsucking flatmates in Wellington, New Zealand. The movie was adapted into an FX series, which is about to start its fourth season and was recently renewed for seasons 5 and 6.
Next up for Waititi is Thor: Love and Thunder, which arrives on the big screen on July 8 and sees him return to the director’s chair in the MCU. While we wait, make sure you’re up to date with the MCU with our guide to Marvel Phase 4.