Daniel Falconer from WETA Workshop writes:
Just to clear up this Decipher Weta Card confusion once and for all, here’s the deal. The person who wrote to you called HumbleSauron appears to be a little confused as well, and is certainly not someone from Weta, so, with all these rumours flying around, I felt compelled to write and straighten things out.
There is no secret behind the origin of these cards. Decipher have been very up front about them from the beginning, so I’ll simply repeat and clarify what they have already said publicly about them on their website. The images are not depicting scenes from the Extended Edition of ROTK. They feature scenes, objects and characters from the books that didn’t appear in the movies but did appear in the books. They have been especially complied for these cards. Weta Workshop and Decipher Inc have collaborated in this process. Decipher hold the rights to produce extra material derived from the books and, wanting to maintain the spirit and flavour of the films, they hired Weta Workshop as collaborators on the project. Where necessary we have made new items, but in most cases we have creatively reused props and costumes already made for the movie in new ways to create new images.
Several of the cards involved very little or no Weta input because they required no new material to be created or were simple image montages. Some (mostly characters) required heavier collaboration between the two companies. Others were all Weta’s work. The latter two categories feature Weta “bug” icons on their cards as a kind of signature (in reference to the native New Zealand insect from which the company derives its name). Decipher have done this as a kind gesture of thanks to Weta for their involvement. On cards that had little or no Weta involvement, the bug doesn’t appear. The absence of a bug does not indicate that the image is from the Extended Edition of ROTK- none of these cards are.
It is true that for the most part the cards feature cameos of Weta or Three Foot Six folks. It made sense because these people were available and it afforded us all a chance to get our moment in the spotlight and be a part of Middle-earth. With respect to Glorfindel, the actor who portrayed that character in the cards was an Elven extra and double during the entire three-movie shoot, but never had his stand-out moment in the films, so we felt it was only right he should get first dibs at being everyone’s favourite missing Elf. There was a costume selected for Radagast at one point when it was possible he was going to appear in the films, but that was nixed quite early on. Weta Workshop’s own John Harding was lined up to play the part if it happened, so when these cards came along he was once again the logical choice.
Some of these new cards have debuted already. Others will appear in the coming months. Please feel free to post this e-mail with my name on it. There is no secrecy here and this is not a spy report or anything unprofessional like that or I would not be writing. I hope that helps explain where these new images have come from. It has been a great fun project for us and I think the final images look really cool. We hope you all enjoy them,
Daniel Falconer,
Designer- Weta Workshop.
