{"id":957,"date":"2006-11-13T14:43:24","date_gmt":"2006-11-13T20:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2006\/11\/13\/weta-evolves-into-global-giant\/"},"modified":"2006-11-13T14:43:24","modified_gmt":"2006-11-13T20:43:24","slug":"weta-evolves-into-global-giant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2006\/11\/13\/957-weta-evolves-into-global-giant\/","title":{"rendered":"Weta evolves into global giant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"intro\">Evolution takes strange turns on islands. Sheltered from competition from established mainland creatures, species can grow freakishly large. New Zealand, for example, evolved the giant flightless moa and the world&#8217;s largest eagle. Perhaps the same process accounts for the growth of New Zealand&#8217;s vfx giant, Weta Digital. Less than a decade ago, Weta was a midsize vfx operation of some 120 people, mostly working for a local filmmaker. But that filmmaker was Peter Jackson, and when he went on to become the creative force behind four huge visual effects blockbusters, the &#8220;Lord of the Rings&#8221; trilogy and &#8220;King Kong,&#8221; Weta grew into one of the world&#8217;s most successful visual effects shops, with more than 400 staffers. One hint of Weta&#8217;s stature is the launch of the AnimfxNZ symposium. It&#8217;s the only such event in the Asia-Pacific area with a partnership from the Visual Effects Society. Now that Jackson seems to be taking a pause from tentpoles, can Weta survive competition with the rest of the world? [<a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.variety.com\/article\/VR1117953662.html?categoryid=13&#038;cs=1\" TARGET=NEW>More<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Evolution takes strange turns on islands. Sheltered from competition from established mainland creatures, species can grow freakishly large&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-old-main-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-fr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}