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Media & Entertainment Law

: Digital Media Law

new book - The New Zealand Hobbit Crisis

By Jonathan Handel, Esq.

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My new book, The New Zealand Hobbit Crisis, is out on Amazon in paper (http://amzn.to/SiHUX2) and Kindle (http://amzn.to/UG7q7F). Check it out. Here's the description:

Essential reading for Hobbit fans and labor/globalization academics alike, THE NEW ZEALAND HOBBIT CRISIS looks back at an attempt to unionize actors on The Hobbit that blew up into a national crisis, driving down the NZ dollar and leading the Prime Minister and Parliament to dance to a Hollywood tune.

All was not well in Middle-earth . . .

After the third Lord of the Rings movie premiered in 2003, fans of the series eagerly anticipated production and release of its prequel, The Hobbit. It turned out they had a while to wait, as a series of troubles delayed production for years: lawsuits, studio bankruptcy, and ejection of producer/director Peter Jackson.

Then, in September 2010, when almost everything seemed resolved, U.S. and international actors unions issued a public alert advising their members ?not to accept work on this non-union production.?

In THE NEW ZEALAND HOBBIT CRISIS (Hollywood Analytics; Nov. 22, 2012; paper USD $7.99; Kindle USD $4.99), entertainment attorney and Hollywood Reporter journalist Jonathan Handel shows how the two-month affair that began with local actors attempting to organize The Hobbitended with a smackdown from U.S.-based Warner Bros. The studio managed to . . . well, let?s not spoil what for many will be a surprise. Suffice it to say that by the end, one member of Parliament said that Warners had ?reduced New Zealand to a client state of a U.S. movie studio? while another said the country had become victim of a ?shakedown.?

But how did an American multinational company all but subjugate a sovereign nation? THE NEW ZEALAND HOBBIT CRISIS tells the tale. Warner Bros. threatened to rip the troubled production from the country and events quickly spiraled out of control. New Zealand plunged into crisis. Saving the Hobbit was do or die for the local film industry, and the government scrambled to avoid disaster.

Protests and rallies erupted and the island nation?s currency fell on the possibility of losing the half-billion dollar project. Director Peter Jackson vowed to ?fight like hell? to keep the shoot in New Zealand. But then studio executives flew in from Los Angeles like colonial masters ready to bring down the hammer.

What happened next was almost unbelievable ? and proved, if nothing else, that not all Hollywood drama is on the screen.

Also check out ?Hollywood on Strike!,? available on Amazon in pb and Kindle. Subscribe to my blog (jhandel.com) for more about entertainment labor. You can also follow me on Twitter or friend me on Facebook. If you work in tech, take a look at my book How to Write LOIs and Term Sheets. -->