Museum: Lights, camera, inaction

Newly released documents reveal how desperate Wellington City Council was to get an ultimately doomed movie museum project with Peter Jackson’s backing off the ground.

They also unveil the council’s lack of confidence in the project’s progress, showing it had drawn up contingency plans for a standalone convention centre.

The documents were released to Stuff, under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act, yesterday.

One shows that council chief executive Kevin Lavery emailed a representative of Wingnut Films in June 2018, saying the council hoped to make a ‘‘go/no-go decision’’ that month to retain the project’s design team and contractor pricing.

‘‘This is obviously now at significant risk,’’ Lavery said.

The plan was pulled in August 2018 when Jackson’s company The Movie Museum Ltd (TMML) and the council jointly announced the ‘‘mutually agreed parting of the ways’’ for the venture.

The first cracks appeared when a scathing letter was leaked to Stuff. In it, Jackson raised concerns that the city council was ‘‘reneging’’ on its contract.

In the latest tranche of released documents, Clare Olssen, executive producer at Wingnut Films, responded to Lavery by email on June 26, asking for an extension.

‘‘I know you were hoping for confirmation by the end of June but we’d like to request that this time frame be extended until the end of July. As you’ll appreciate, there is a lot to work through and, unfortunately, this is also at a time when we are in the middle of post-production on two feature films.’’

The movie museum plan was launched with much fanfare in 2015, as part of a $180 million convention centre on a Cable St site near Te Papa. The museum would have contained many pieces of movie memorabilia from Jackson’s own collection and was talked up as a ‘‘major drawcard’’ by then prime minister John Key.

The council, led by Lavery and Wellington Mayor Justin Lester, appeared to grow increasingly desperate to see the project go ahead, imposing several arbitrary deadlines on TMML in the hope of getting it locked down.

Yesterday, Lester would not be drawn on specifics of the documents but he said: ‘‘We all tried our best; unfortunately, we couldn’t make it work.’’

Emails between the parties show the council tried several times to keep TMML sweet and make the deal work – including agreeing to numerous revised proposals that increased costs.

In February this year, it was indicated that the council would make $18m in funding available to the Jackson-led company to help with ‘‘hard fitout costs’’ and a raft of other expenses, including insurance.

The documents reveal disagreements over costs and who would pay for certain features, as well as detailed imagery showing how advanced the project was before it was pulled.

The risks became too large and a line had to be drawn in the sand. On August 7, Lavery and Lester laid their cards on table, offering Jackson a way out.

In a letter sent a week before they were due to meet the film director, Lester and Lavery said they were now at the point where they needed to make significant decisions. They pointed out they could deliver a standalone convention centre.

‘‘It would be helpful to have a clear view from you as to whether the approach outlined works for you,’’ one message read.

In particular, they were seeking to make decisions on the museum layout and a firm commitment to deliver additionally requested information for the preliminary design work by late last month.

They also asked for an undertaking to expedite a binding unconditional agreement to advance the project. ‘‘In the event . . . we decided to jointly discontinue the project, then we would want to manage this outcome proactively with you.’’

The letter states the council had already done some preliminary work on the standalone convention centre as a contingency. It would feature a large exhibition space.

As a consolation, they offered up the potential for Jackson to showcase his ‘‘works, film-making skills and collections’’ in the space. – additional reporting by Alex Liu.

‘‘We all tried our best; unfortunately, we couldn’t make it work.’’

Wellington Mayor Justin Lester