Karl Urban, a Wellington, New Zealand native who portrays Eomer in the upcoming feature film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers will be the on-air host of Travel Channel’s “New Zealand Night” Sunday, December 15. Travel Channel will air portions of an exclusive one-on-one interview with Mr. Urban who discusses what he loves most about his country and shares anecdotes and experiences from shooting on location in New Zealand during filming of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, opening in theaters nationwide December 18.
Excerpts from the interview will introduce and wrap Travel Channel’s “New Zealand Night” which includes the world television premiere of “NEW ZEALAND: THE ROYAL TOUR” at 9 PM (ET/PT) and the world television premiere of “SECRETS OF NEW ZEALAND” at 10 PM (ET/PT).
“NEW ZEALAND: THE ROYAL TOUR” features New Zealand’s Prime Minister Helen Clark who embarks on an exclusive adventure tour of “Middle-earth” in which she traverses the lush rainforests, alpine peaks and steep canyons of this majestic land where the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy was filmed. Viewers may recognize locations as the actual backdrops from the Rings film trilogy. Footage from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring appears in the program.
Immediately following the “NEW ZEALAND: THE ROYAL TOUR” premiere, Travel Channel will air “SECRETS OF NEW ZEALAND” which explores New Zealand’s spectacular beauty, while revealing its active volcanoes, dangerous earthquake faults, violent oceans and treacherous weather. The program also reveals ancient secrets of New Zealand’s first inhabitants, the Maori, proud warriors who proved their courage by decorating their faces with the world’s most painful tattoos and by taking the heads of their enemies in battle.
The central film in the trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, follows the three separate journeys of the splintered Fellowship — Hobbits Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) as they venture deeper into enemy territory, with the mercurial creature Gollumhttp://theonering.net/movie/char/smeagol.html (Andy Serkis) serving as their guide; Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) in the mysteriously alive Fangorn Forest; and the human Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), the Elf archer Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli the Dwarf (John Rhys-Davies) in the besieged Rohan Kingdom. Together they must stand against the gathering darkness emanating from the Two Towers — Orthanc Tower in Isengard where the corrupted wizard Saruman builds his lethal army Uruk-hai; and Sauron’s fortress at Barad-dûr deep within the dark lands of Mordor.
The Travel Channel is the only television network devoted exclusively to visiting the world’s most popular destinations. Travel Channel’s web site can be accessed at http://www.discovery.com . The network is available in more than 67 million homes and is a service of Discovery Networks U.S., a unit of Discovery Communications, Inc.
