Chapter 455: CH : 444 New Zealand Is Cheaper

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Marvin wanted large-scale digital effects years before they would become routine. He wanted MASSIVE handling of enormous digital armies. He wanted motion capture eventually used to bring Gollum to life.

And they couldn’t simply put one camera crew in one location and work their way through the films at a normal pace.

Multiple units would have to operate at once.

Sometimes in completely different parts of the country.

That meant transportation, communications, equipment, accommodation, safety crews, production managers, assistants, coordinators and enough technicians to keep the whole machine moving.

The battles alone were a production inside the production.

Hundreds of stunt performers. Practical effects. Horses. Weapons. Fire. Digital doubles.

Multiple cameras and units working at the same time.

One mistake could injure somebody. A worse mistake could kill somebody.

No amount of money made that disappear.

Marvin understood that. He could hire executives. He could buy equipment. He could throw another fifty million dollars at a problem whenever one appeared.

But he couldn’t manufacture twenty years of studio experience overnight. Nor did he have thousands of experienced people in it.

Meyers Studios would eventually need that infrastructure. It would need established production companies, experienced crews and facilities of its own.

That would take time. Years, in fact. This includes the acquisition of other established studios to fast-track this process.

Currently, he had neither the time nor the money to buy other studios.

The films were too important to him to sit around waiting for his studio to grow large enough to handle them.

Which was why Warner Bros. was necessary.

But necessary didn’t mean trusted. And it certainly didn’t mean ownership.

Marvin had no intention of surrendering the underlying rights to Tolkien’s work. He wasn’t about to hand over the core rights to three potentially enormous films just because Warner Bros. had the infrastructure to help make them.

He would give them something else.

A place inside the machine.

Warner could provide the production infrastructure, distribution relationships, experienced personnel and logistical muscle that Meyers Studios simply didn’t possess yet.

In return, Marvin would make concessions.

Big ones, if necessary.

He could tolerate a larger fee. He could accept Warner taking a meaningful piece of the eventual theatrical economics. If the numbers worked, he could even happily walk away from a large share of the immediate backend.

What he wouldn’t give up was ownership.

And he wouldn’t give up creative control.

If sacrificing part of the eventual profit bought him ironclad control over the property for decades, Marvin could live with that.

Money came back.

Rights didn’t.

He had seen what happened when studios eventually decided that a beloved world was simply another piece of intellectual property to exploit.

Once executives started treating the lore as an inconvenience, the damage was difficult to undo.

Marvin had already lived through one version of that future.

He wasn’t going to watch it happen again.

The studio system eventually created the soulless, corporate garbage known in his past life as *The Rings of Power*, the animated *The War of the Rohirrim*, or the disastrous, lore-breaking woke monstrosities that Stephen Colbert had written.

That was the part nobody in the building understood yet.

To Warner Bros., this was a massive fantasy production with an enormous commercial upside.

To Peter, it was the chance to make the films he’d dreamed about.

To Marvin, it was both of those things.

But it was also something he intended to protect for the rest of his life.

He glanced toward the conference-room doors.

He wasn’t here to ask Warner Bros. for permission to make *Lord of the Rings*.

He was here to figure out how to make Warner Bros. useful without ever letting them own it.

Once they entered the glass-walled conference room, Peter immediately understood that Marvin had not brought him here for a simple presentation.

The room was already occupied.

Senior executives from Warner Bros. Pictures were spread around the long conference table, with people from production, business affairs, distribution and marketing among them. Lorenzo di Bonaventura was there as the studio’s production chief, while other executives had been brought in because a project of this size couldn’t be evaluated from the production side alone.

Barry Meyer was present as well.

He had been running Warner Bros.’ operations for years and, after the departures of Robert Daly and Terry Semel were announced, had been selected to become the studio’s next chairman and chief executive. Alan sat prominently at the table, still chairman and chief executive of Castle Rock Entertainment for the moment, though everyone in the room knew that his move into Warner Bros.’ top leadership was already decided and would take effect in October.

That alone told Peter something. They were taking Marvin’s relationship seriously.

He swallowed and adjusted his grip on the leather portfolio.

The greetings began. Firm handshakes.

Names. Introductions. A few polite jokes.

One of the executives looked at Marvin and smiled. "Marvin, you’ve gotten taller."

Marvin laughed lightly. "I’m trying."

"Keep it up," the man said. "At this rate we’ll have you playing the tough guy before long."

A few people around the table chuckled.

Another executive smiled. "After what happened at the Miramax party, I wouldn’t bet against him."

That earned a slightly louder laugh.

Peter laughed too, although his came a little late.

He was still trying to absorb the fact that he was sitting in a Warner Bros. executive conference room with people who could make decisions worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Nobody was particularly interested in him yet.

Their attention kept returning to Marvin.

Peter couldn’t blame them. Marvin was the person financing the project.

More importantly, he was the person who controlled it.

Once everyone had settled, the room gradually quieted.

Alan Horn looked toward Peter.

"All right. Let’s start at the beginning."

Peter took a breath. Marvin leaned back in his chair.

He had no intention of dominating the first part of the meeting.

This was Peter’s film.

Peter deserved to sell it. "Gentlemen," Peter began, his voice slightly tight at first, "what we’re proposing is a three-picture adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s *The Lord of the Rings*."

A few executives exchanged brief looks. They had all read the material. Most of them had also read unrevised scripts.

But a script sitting in development and a three-picture commitment were very different things.

Peter continued.

"The story is being treated as one continuous narrative divided into three feature films. The Fellowship of the Ring establishes the world and the journey. The Two Towers carries that journey into open war, and The Return of the King brings the story to its conclusion."

He moved toward the projector.

The first image appeared. New Zealand. Mountains stretching toward the horizon. Green valleys. Rocky country. Dark forests.

Peter’s shoulders relaxed slightly.

This was the part he understood. "I spent considerable time scouting locations," he said. "The South Island in particular gives us landscapes that simply cannot be manufactured convincingly on a soundstage. Mountains, open country, forests, rivers, isolated valleys. We can build Middle-earth around the real geography rather than trying to make the geography around the film."

Another photograph appeared. Then another. The room became quieter.

Even the executives who had already seen some of the material watched the screen.

Peter’s confidence grew. "The goal isn’t to make fantasy look artificial. We want the audience to believe these places existed before the story arrived. We want them to feel old."

Lorenzo di Bonaventura watched without interrupting.

Peter moved to the next set of images. "This is also why New Zealand is important from a production standpoint. We’re not talking about a few location days. We’re talking about a production that will be there for a considerable period of time. The country gives us an enormous variety of environments within a relatively manageable production base."

Marvin finally leaned forward. "And it gives us a better opportunity to put the money on the screen."

Peter glanced at him.

Marvin continued. "Three films are expensive anywhere. They’re considerably more expensive if you’re paying Hollywood rates while trying to build an entire fantasy world around them."

He didn’t say it as though he were trying to impress anyone.

He was simply laying out the calculation. "We can establish the principal production base in New Zealand, keep the company there for an extended period and build permanent infrastructure instead of repeatedly transporting a huge crew back and forth across the Pacific."

A production executive nodded slowly. That was the kind of language they understood.

Marvin gestured toward the photographs. "We aren’t trying to make three cheap movies because New Zealand is cheaper. We’re trying to make three enormous movies without wasting money simply because we’re working in Los Angeles."

That distinction mattered.

Peter nodded. "Exactly."

He changed the slide. Concept artwork appeared. Gondor. Rivendell. Moria. The Shire. Middle-earth began taking shape across the screen.

Peter’s voice became more animated. "The cast is another important point. This isn’t a star vehicle in the traditional sense. It’s an ensemble. The audience needs to believe that these people have been traveling together, living together and fighting together."

He looked around the room. "I don’t believe we need to spend a fortune filling every major role with an established movie star."

Nobody objected. That was one of the first things everyone in the room understood about the project.

The money needed to go somewhere else. Sets. Costumes. Creatures. Locations. Stunts. Effects. The world itself.

Peter continued. "We’ll cast for the characters first. If we find established actors who fit, wonderful. But we’re not going to spend tens of millions simply because someone has a recognizable name."

Marvin nodded. "And that’s where my involvement becomes useful."

Peter glanced at him.

Marvin continued calmly. "The marketing doesn’t have to depend on an expensive collection of stars. I already have an audience. If I’m playing Legolas, that gives the studio a recognizable face without changing the fundamental structure of the ensemble."

One of the marketing executives looked down at the character breakdown in front of him. "Legolas." He tapped the page. "Isn’t he relatively peripheral in the books?"

Peter shifted slightly. This was the question he’d been expecting. "Yes."

"And you’re planning to increase his role?"

"I am."

"How much?"

Peter hesitated only briefly. "Enough to make him a meaningful part of the action without taking the story away from the Fellowship."

The executive looked toward Marvin.

Marvin said nothing.

Peter continued. "Legolas is one of the few characters who can move through the action without disrupting the balance of the group. His abilities also give us opportunities visually. Archery, agility, movement through difficult terrain. We can make him memorable."

Lorenzo finally spoke. "Memorable is fine." His eyes moved from Peter to Marvin. "But we aren’t going to distort Tolkien’s story just to give one actor more things to do."

Peter nodded quickly. "I agree."

"Good." There was no hostility in Lorenzo’s voice.

It was simply a line that needed to be drawn early.

The presentation continued. They went through the three films. The structure. The principal characters. The proposed shooting schedule. The locations. The visual effects philosophy. The practical approach to the creatures. The scale of the battles. The concept art.

The room gradually shifted from curiosity to calculation.

The more Peter revealed, the more the executives began looking past the concept itself and toward the practical reality of making it.

They already understood the scale.

No one around the table needed a reminder of how many departments would have to work at once, how much equipment would have to be moved, how many people would have to be hired, or how complicated the schedule would become once three interconnected films were being shot as one enormous production.

They also understood why Marvin had brought them into the room.

Meyers Studios could finance the pictures.

Warner Bros. could provide things the young studio hadn’t had time to build yet.

That was the arrangement everyone was waiting to hear.

Peter continued through the presentation, moving from the overall story into the production itself. The executives listened, occasionally making notes or exchanging a quiet comment between themselves.

Nobody interrupted him.

Not yet.

They were letting Peter finish the creative case before they started taking the project apart from a business standpoint.

Alan Horn watched Marvin more than anyone.

Marvin remained quiet, occasionally asking Peter a question or leaning forward when something on the screen caught his attention. He didn’t look nervous.

He knew exactly why he was here.

So did everyone else.

They weren’t expecting Marvin to walk into the room and surrender the property.

If they had been in his position, they would have done the same thing.

The question was how much Warner could reasonably get in exchange for becoming part of the production without touching the underlying copyright or production.

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