Animal wranglers involved in the making of The Hobbit trilogy are say the production company is responsible for the deaths of up to 27 animals, alleging the New Zealand ranch near Wellington where the animals were kept included bluffs, sinkholes and a variety of “death traps” that resulted in injuries to the animals and/or their death.
Wrangler Chris Langridge said he was hired as a horse trainer in November 2010, overseeing 50 or so horses and while he tried to improve the grounds by filling in sinkholes and building fences it proved an impossible task. As many as three horses, six goats, six sheep and a dozen chickens are said to have died while two more horses suffered severe injuries but survived.
“When I arrived at work in the morning, [a miniature pony named Rainbow] was still alive but his back was broken. He’d come off a bank at speed and crash-landed,” Langridge told the AP (via EW). “He was in a bad state.” Rainbow, who had been slated for use as a hobbit horse, was euthanized. A week later, a horse named Doofus got caught in some fencing and sliced open its leg. That horse survived, but Langridge said he’d had enough and he and his wife quit the production in February 2011.
Another wrangler, Johnny Smythe, said that shortly after Landridge left a horse named Claire was found dead, its head submerged in a stream after it fell over a bluff. The horses were then placed in stables where a third horse passed away. No autopsy was performed on the horse, which was named Zeppelin. And while vet records say the horse died of natural causes, Smythe said the horse was bloated and its intestines were full of a yellow liquid; he believes it died of digestive problems caused by new feed.
Goats and sheep died falling into sinkholes, contracting worms or getting new feed after the grass was eaten. Some chickens were mauled by dogs after being left out of their enclosure.
Smythe said he was fired in October 2011 after arguing with his boss about the treatment of the animals.
Matt Dravitzki, a spokeman for trilogy director Peter Jackson is quoted saying, “We do know those deaths were avoidable and we took steps to make sure it didn’t happen again.” He said the production company reacted swiftly after the first two horses died, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading housing and stable facilities in early 2011.
As for the reported deaths, Dravitzki said Zeppelin died of a burst blood vessel and that he knew only of three goats, one sheep and about eight chickens that had died aside from that. He said two of the goats died in a cold snap but the third, like the sheep, was old and had likely died of natural causes.
The American Humane Association investigated the farm at the production company’s request, which took place in August 2011, months after the deaths reported, and said, “We made safety recommendations to the animals’ living areas. The production company followed our recommendations and upgraded fence and farm housing, among other things.”
PETA is already planning protests at the premieres of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in New Zealand, U.S. and the U.K.
While all of this sounds terrible, I have to seriously question the timing of the allegations. Why would this not have been made public back in 2010 when Landridge first took issue with the situation before leaving in early 2011? When production on HBO’s television series “Luck” continued to suffer losses of horses the show was eventually canceled and it didn’t take two years to get word out. This doesn’t make what happened on the set of The Hobbit right, but it certainly calls into question the motivations of those making the allegations.
