WWDITS Movie Stole Material From The Hobbit Set, Reveals Taika Waititi
Taika Waititi has revealed that his vampire mockumentary film What We Do in the Shadows has a surprising connection to Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy. The Hobbit films were Jackson's big-budget follow-up to his massively successful Lord of the Rings films. Comprising of An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of the Five Armies, the trilogy was significantly less well-received critically than LOTR, but still made a collective $2.94 billion. This was partially due to the fact that the trilogy, even though it was set in the time before LOTR, was still able to feature appearances by several original characters, including Ian McKellen's Gandalf, Orlando Bloom's Legolas, and Hugo Weaving's Elrond.
What We Do in the Shadows, despite also being a New Zealand production, is considerably more of a sleeper hit. The 2014 film, which was co-written, co-directed by, and starred Waititi and Jemaine Clement, is a satirical look at vampire roommates, made off a budget of about $1.6 million. The film made a reasonable $7 million worldwide, but it became successful through a word-of-mouth campaign after its original theatrical run, landing on many «best of» lists for both horror and comedy projects of the decade. By 2019, it was well known enough to spawn an FX TV series adaptation, also titled What We Do in the Shadows, which is currently gearing up for season 4.
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This week, Waititi appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to discuss his upcoming MCU project Thor: Love and Thunder, which hits theaters on July 8. Colbert is a well-known avid Lord of the Rings fan (he even had a cameo in The Desolation of Smaug), and couldn't resist asking the Kiwi filmmaker
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