Jackson’s $150m realty empire
Director’s property portfolio could justify renaming capital Jacksonville
Sir Peter Jackson’s hometown once flirted with labelling itself Wellywood, but perhaps Jacksonville would be more appropriate after revelations the richlist director has acquired more than $100 million in Wellington real estate over the past two decades.
According to data collated by CoreLogic, the Hollywood director and driving force behind the capital’s Wellywood film industry has assembled a property empire based in Wellington, but with outposts stretching from Masterton to Queenstown, worth $150m.
This includes $77m in commercial property in Miramar tied to his Weta group of film-making companies that employs nearly 2000 people in the capital, as well as heritage-protected Wellington landmarks the former Vatican Embassy in Melrose and Seatoun churches St Christopher’s and Our Lady, Star of the Sea.
His holdings also include nearly 20 residential properties including a large chunk of a Wellington street, a new holiday home in Queenstown, and his sprawling Wairarapa estate.
It includes buildings listed as providing 1639sq m of floor space and is said to include a 100-seat cinema, underground tunnels and a recreation of hobbit home Bag End, has a combined council valuation of $12.8m.
Property records show in July he acquired a relatively modest 110sq m holiday home in Closeburn, 10 minutes’ drive from Queenstown. It adjoins two other sections he’d previously acquired, with his holdings in the region valued at $3.6m.
Jackson’s property holdings had been mostly kept in the name of his Wellington lawyer but earlier this year were restructured into a new company, Stanley Properties, directed by Jackson and his long-time partner Frances Walsh.
Stanley Properties is owned by Wingnut Films — the production company behind Lord of the Rings — which in turn is owned by Jackson, Walsh and Phillipa Boyens. Boyens is a neighbour and long-time business partner of Jackson and has coproduced each of his films since 2005’s King Kong.
The trio are credited as coscreenwriters on the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogies, which made $9 billion at the box office.
Business properties associated with the Weta Group — worth some $40m and including vast studios in Miramar and the former General Motors car factory in Upper Hutt — are held by Camperdown Studios, whose ownership is split equally between interests associated with Jackson and those of his long-time partner and Weta Workshop founder Sir Richard Taylor.
Jackson, in London this week to launch his World War I documentary They Shall Not Grow Old based on colourised historic footage, did not respond to requests for comment. The director is famously protective of his and his family’s privacy, and earlier this year said he did not comment on personal finances.
This may partly explain his acquisition of most of a Karaka Bay street. Since 2000, when LOTR was being made, he began acquiring properties overlooking and neighbouring his home. He now owns 13 adjacent sections, including 3208 sq m of housing, worth $21.8m.
Real estate is not the only major asset held by Jackson, assessed by Forbes as being worth $600m.
In 2013 he bought a new Gulfstream GVI650 private jet — worth $80m and capable of flying further and faster than anything operated by the Royal New Zealand Air Force — and founded The Vintage Aviator, a company churning out million-dollar recreations of WWI military aircraft.
And, in documents released last week under the Official Information Act to the Dominion Post detailing his movie museum joint venture with Wellington Council, claimed his collection of film props and sets, including the original car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, was valued $100m.
Jackson’s latest film, an adaptation of fantasy novel Mortal Engines, will be released on December 7.