New Zealand Draws New Interest with 'Hobbit'

Dec. 11, 2011, MATAMATA, New Zealand -- Ian Alexander remembers the day well. He was watching a rugby match on TV when a knock came at the door. He opened it to find a location scout seeking permission to film scenes from Lord of the Rings on his sprawling sheep farm.

"I said, 'Lord of the what? I'm just a bloody old broken-down farmer with a few sheep running around,' " Alexander recalls.

Flash-forward a dozen years or so, and Alexander, 70, is still on the farm. Except the old wool shed has been converted into the Shire's Rest restaurant. And 20,000-plus visitors (some of whom speak Elvish) annually trudge through the lush emerald-green undulations of his 1,250-acre farm. And his son, Russell, a onetime accountant, is now general manager of Shire Tours.

The movie people came calling again recently, seeking to reprise the farm's role as the Shire in two upcoming Hobbit movies (set for release in 2012 and 2013). Filming has wrapped at the site, and visitors are once again being allowed into Hobbiton, as it's known. All who enter must sign a non-disclosure agreement (under threat of a kajillion-dollar lawsuit and the sacrifice of a child or two).

But suffice it to say, the land is now riddled with fanciful Hobbit dwellings. Producer/director Peter Jackson, who owns a 50% share of the attraction, has left the sets intact, unlike after the previous filming, when all that remained were the unadorned facades of 17 Hobbit holes. There wasn't much to see, but fans flocked anyway.

Jackson's first three boffo-at-the-box-office films (they grossed almost $3 billion) based on the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy trilogy feature 158 locations in New Zealand. In many instances, those locales were digitally manipulated or otherwise enhanced so as to be unrecognizable in their natural state.

No matter. The LOTR franchise is partially responsible for a tourism windfall in this island nation 9,000 air miles from New York. Global visitor numbers are up 40% since 2000. At least five official LOTR-themed tour companies are in operation. And TheLord of the Rings Location Guidebook has sold 500,000 copies, making it one of the country's best-selling non-fiction titles.

Shearing off that sheepish image

Most important, perhaps, outsiders' perceptions of the country changed.

"It's not just about sheep anymore," says Gisella Carr, chief executive of Film New Zealand. "A movie was able to shift the way people thought about New Zealand. And that's remarkable."

Tourism officials are confident the new Hobbit films will draw a fresh round of Middle-earth enthusiasts. Fans will have to wait for specifics on locales, however, given the hush-hush nature of the project. A no-fly zone was imposed over Alexander's farm during filming, for instance.