Calls for movie-makers to develop Middle-earth museum

With the final part of The Hobbit trilogy currently attracting cinema audiences worldwide, actors from the movie series and fans are calling for a new Middle Earth museum to be built in New Zealand.

With record numbers of visitors heading to New Zealand, actor Sir Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf throughout The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit trilogies has suggested that series Director Peter Jackson should now develop a museum where fans can experience more of author J.R.R. Tolkien's imaginary world.

Speaking before Christmas at the world premiere of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies in London, Sir Ian told reporters "of course the next development I hope is that Peter's going to devise, not more films, but a situation that you can all go to that is as much theatrical as cinematic.

"A living museum where you will actually have the experience - as you sometimes do in the greatest exhibitions of that sort in Hollywood - to go into that and be there."

At present, fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings can visit the Hobbiton Movie Set near Matamata on New Zealand’s North Island as part of a two-hour guided tour where visitors can see Hobbit Holes, The Green Dragon Inn, The Mill, double-arched bridge and other structures and gardens built for the films.

In Wellington, the Weta Workshop offers tours of the design studio and physical manufacturing facility behind not only The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit trilogies but many other international entertainment and creative industries while in Switzerland an enthusiast has opened what is claimed to the first museum dedicated to Tolkien’s fictional Middle-earth universe.

New Zealand was used as the sole filming location for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies - filmed over a 16-year period.

Jackson recently started to develop a temporary First World War exhibition at the former Dominion Museum Building in Wellington to go on display from April 2015.

Jackson, who has also backed plans for a film museum in the New Zealand capital, suggested he would need a holiday first before developing a Middle Earth museum.

According to a recent survey by Tourism New Zealand, between July 2013 and June 2014, around 13% of all international holiday visitors to New Zealand said The Hobbit films were a factor in their choice of destination.

Since 2012, when the first part of The Hobbit trilogy was released, visitor arrivals have surged to a record annual rate of 2.83 million visitors – up from 2.4 million – and figures for next year expected to rise to around 3.2 million. Spending has also grown 10% to $7.2 billion in the year ended September 2014. 

A range of tour operators also offer tours to many of the locations used The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies across New Zealand's North and South Islands. 

Images show the Hobbiton set (top) and WETA Workshops (bottom).

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