The L.A. Times blog recently did a big story on Gary Kurtz who was a guiding hand in the Star Wars galaxy until he left after “The Empire Strikes Back.” He talks a lot about those films and his split from George Lucas over creative differences but he drops a little nugget about what Weta will be up to as well. It says,

He’s now working on a ramping feature-film project called “Panzer 88” that he says will begin filming later this year and will feature visual effects by Weta, the same New Zealand outfit that populated Middle-earth in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

It isn’t thought that this should have any effect on the pair of movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” but people in New Zealand are certainly staying busy. Read the whole story here.