Having finished the highly lauded The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Weta now faces a bright future.

These are interesting times for Weta Digital. From humble beginnings in 1994 the facility has grown in size and ambition more rapidly and spectacularly than any other in memory, and with The Lord of the Rings proven itself a leader in the field of visual effects. The likes of ILM and Digital Domain may have comparable technology and abilities, but they don’t have Peter Jackson’s trilogy. No other movies have displayed CG work that’s at once quite so dazzling yet integral to the telling of a story. For the moment at least, Weta has the edge.

But with the final movie in the bag, now comes a period of uncertainty. As the studio decompresses, recovering from a marathon seven-year stint on the films, it finds itself exposed once again to the whims and ways of the film industry at large.

Jackson’s impending King Kong project provides some security, guaranteeing work and jobs through the end of 2005. But the staff at Weta knows they must also now compete in the global market for other work. The studio has been able to scale down and then ramp up between each of the Rings movies, but what about the long term? It’s arguable that while an LA-based facility can rely on freelance talent to expand and contract as the work dictates, one based in New Zealand requires rather more stability.

Most people wrongly assume that Weta exists solely to work on Peter Jackson projects. This Jaguar spot successfully launched Weta’s commerical division. As a result, Weta is now bidding to work on other spots. Courtesy of Jaguar.

At the production peak of The Return of the King, the studio was home to some 400 staff. With that show complete, except for the DVD extras, the studio has quickly scaled back once more.

“We’ve kept our core crew of just over 200, the same size as we were between each film,” says Eileen Moran, Weta Digital’s visual effects producer. As the workload demands another expansion, she foresees many familiar faces making the journey to New Zealand once more. “We have a wide net of artists and crew that have worked on the trilogy. As each of the three films ramped up for the last six months of production, we always hired as many of the same crew to come back. It worked out really well and we plan to continue to draw from our resources.”

Vfx supervisor Joe Letteri suggests the upcoming King Kong project will probably be more demanding than LOTR for Weta.

King Kong has the potential to be another milestone movie. Visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri says the project will be at least as demanding as The Return of the King — perhaps more so. With a fully digital ape, an island that’s home to at least 30 dinosaurs and a 1933 period setting that will also require complex digital set work, it’s easy to believe. But Kong is slated for release at the end of 2005. The studio is only at the previs stage, and doesn’t plan on entering full production until the final year. In the meantime, the studio needs to pay its way and keep that core team active.

To this end, Moran has been pitching for new work since early last year, and in fact two projects were taken on board in 2003. “We completed a Jaguar commercial, and also a visual effects storm sequence for Perfect Strangers, a wonderful New Zealand film, while in full production on The Return of the King,” Moran says.

The studio also successfully bid for a substantial number of shots for Fox’s I, Robot. The show will see Weta working again with Digital Domain, the latter studio having contributed the Ford Bruinen sequence for The Fellowship of the Ring.

“We’ll have approximately 80 artists working on I, Robot. It’s a great one to be involved with, not least because it’s set in the future and features robots, so it gives us the opportunity to do something very different to The Lord of the Rings.”