Jackson recreates Bilbo Baggins’ lair
Peter Jackson spent more than ten years making The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, so it’s understandable that he’d be missing Bilbo, Thorin, Gandalf and co.
What fans might not expect, is that the New Zealand director suffered such bad Middle Earth withdrawal symptoms that he asked set designers to recreate Bilbo’s house, Bag End, in the basement of his 1930s Masterton mansion. Crew member Bino Smith told Stuff that JRR Tolkien-loving Jackson’s “eye for detail was such that [they] had to build it right down to the feather, so everything is exactly the same as the movie — but it’s livable”.
“Bag End is underground. You have to go under tunnels to get to it,” he said, before describing just how elaborate this whole thing really is.
“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 and 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. There’s nothing like it in this world.”
Legendary directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are invited to stay in Bag End “all the time”, according to Smith, who revealed that when the front door opens up, you can see castle ruins through the trees.
Time to make being Jackson’s best mate your lifelong ambition.