Peter Jackson’s seemingly endless Tolkien franchises might have finally ended but the director is reticent to say goodbye and has turned part of his New Zealand home into a tribute to Middle Earth.
A set artist, who worked on the Lord of the Rings trilogy with Jackson, revealed that the basement of the Oscar-winning director’s house has been turned into an exact replica of Bilbo’s house Bag End. “His eye for detail, was such that we had to build it right down to the feather, so everything is exactly the same as the movie — but it’s liveable,” Bino Smith said, according to Stuff . “There’s nothing like it in this world. People can stay there.”
Jackson bought a two-storey 1930s mansion in Masterton in New Zealand and employed the same team who worked on the film to turn one floor into an ode to JRR Tolkien’s work, using the same set. “Bag End is underground,” Smith said. “You have to go under tunnels to get to it. You got the house, then you go down to the wine cellar and you pull a bottle, and it opens up a door, then you step out a look down this corridor — about 35 metres, we had to create it, then you go down one part, then there’s a skeleton and some bodies, then you come out to a mock torture chamber, then you pull a book in a bookcase and the bookcase opens, and you walk into Bag End.”
Smith also explained that other directors come to visit and use it as a “playground”, including Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.
