As part of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’s premiere festivities, Air New Zealand graciously invited TheOneRing.net to the red carpet reveal of their new Smaug plane! Fili of Happy Hobbit was in attendance and thank goodness she was, for two certain dwarf brother recognized her on sight! Another surprise was the appearance of Peter Jackson, so join the director himself, Aidan Turner, Dean O’Gorman, and TORn staffers Quickbeam, Sarumann, and Fili and her mother Dis for a fun time and some interviews with the cast! [Air New Zealand]

Below are some images Fili caught of the event.

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Weta’s Ben Hawker is a brilliant guy and he worked with the creative and fun folks at Air New Zealand to create the ideas that became perhaps the most popular airline safety video in the world, collecting 8 million hits since it was launched a week ago. TheOneRing was honored to play a part with Cliff “Quickbeam” Broadway and I (Larry “MrCere” Curtis) appearing to help represent fans from across the globe. Well, they also asked us to chime in on the behind-the-scenes video which features J.R.R. Tolkien’s grandsons Royd and Mike, the genuinely excellent and beautiful airline employees Kara, Mark and Will (plus others not in the video), the film’s director Josh, the soon-to-be superstar Dean O’Gorman, Peter Jackson and that Hawker guy. TORn may have its own version of a story and photos from that set before long but Air New Zealand has a great video to follow up last week’s starting off with a familiar face. Also fun, many of the crew making this video also worked on The Hobbit. Check out the short clip on the next page! Continue reading “A secret look inside Air NZ’s Middle-earth safety video”