Taika Waititi has revealed the source of the green and wooden screens in What We Do in the Shadow: they were stolen from the set of the second Hobbit movie. Both films were filmed in New Zealand and were released within a year of each other, in 2013 and 2014 respectively.
“When I did What We Do in the Shadows, when Jemaine [Clement, the movie’s co-director, co-writer, and star] and I was shooting that, we didn’t have a lot of money to make that movie, and The Hobbit had just finished,” Waititi said in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (opens in a new tab). “And so our production designer, man, I don’t know if I should say this. Okay, but I will: our production designer, in the dead of night, took his team to The Hobbit studios and stole We dismantled all of it, tore down green screens and took all the wood, and built a house.”
The director added: “I had never spoken to [The Hobbit director] Peter Jackson on this. I don’t know if he knows. I like to tell it at parties, that story. But I don’t know if he really knows.”
What We Do in the Shadows had a budget of $1.6 million compared to The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug$200 million. Waititi and Clement’s vampire mockumentary follows a group of four blood-sucking roommates in Wellington, New Zealand. The movie was adapted into a series for FX, which is about to start its fourth season and was recently renewed for seasons 5 and 6.
Next up for Waititi is Thor: love and thunder, which hits the big screen on July 8 and sees him return to the director’s chair in the MCU. While we wait, make sure you stay up to date with the MCU with our guide to wonder phase 4.
