Taika Waititi admits to stealing equipment from 'The Hobbit' set to use for 'What We Do in the Shadows'
New Zealand filmmaker and actor Taika Waititi appeared Wednesday on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where he shared a Hobbit-sized secret regarding the second film in the popular franchise directed by fellow Kiwi Oscar winner Peter Jackson.
Waititi shared, "When I did What We Do in the Shadows, when Jemaine [Clement, the film's 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. And, so, our production designer — man, I don't know if I should tell this. OK, 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."
There was about a $200 million, give or take, budget difference between Waititi's low-budget 2014 vampire comedy (which inspired the FX series) and Jackson's second Hobbit film, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), which, as Waititi pointed out, had already wrapped, so Jackson probably didn't care. Although, according to the Thor: Love and Thunder director, Jackson also likely doesn't know.
"I had never talked to 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," admitted Waititi.
The Late Show With Stephen Colbert airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on CBS.
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