Taika Waititi might be a world-renowned director working on major projects for huge franchises like Marvel and Star Wars but there was a time when he was just an up-and-coming filmmaker trying to make ends meet on an independent feature.
What We Do in the Shadows would turn into a cult classic but Taika Waititi has revealed that production wasn't always easy. At one point, the crew decided to take some of the materials abandoned by The Hobbit to build a set for their own project!
Taika Waititi was recently a guest on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert where he discussed what it was like when he started working on What We Do in the Shadows with co-director Jemaine Clement.
"When I did What We Do in the Shadows, when Jemaine and I were shooting that, we didn’t have much money to do that film, and The Hobbit had just wrapped," Waititi said.
"And, so, our production designer – man, I don’t know if I should tell this," he continued. "Okay, 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."
But is The Hobbit director Peter Jackson even aware that the old materials were stolen? "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," Waititi said.
We're not sure what Peter Jackson has to say about this but we're hoping he doesn't mind considering that the crew of What We Do in the Shadows put the old materials to good use.
Taika Waititi's latest project Thor: Love and Thunder will hit theaters on July 8, 2022.
Related: Chris Pratt Teases Thor: Love and Thunder Characters Returning in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
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