Taika Waititi admits to stealing equipment from 'The Hobbit' set to use for 'What We Do in the Shadows'

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New Zealand filmmaker and actor Taika Waititi appeared Wednesday on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where he shared a Hobbit-sized secret regarding the second film in the popular franchise directed by fellow Kiwi Oscar winner Peter Jackson.

Waititi shared, "When I did What We Do in the Shadows, when Jemaine [Clement, the film's co-writer and star] and I were shooting that, we didn't have much money to do that film, and The Hobbit had just wrapped. And, so, our production designer — man, I don't know if I should tell this. OK, but I will. Our production designer, in the dead of night, took his crew to The Hobbit studios and stole all of the dismantled, broken-down green screens and took all of the timber, and we built a house."

There was about a $200 million, give or take, budget difference between Waititi's low-budget 2014 vampire comedy (which inspired the FX series) and Jackson's second Hobbit film, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), which, as Waititi pointed out, had already wrapped, so Jackson probably didn't care. Although, according to the Thor: Love and Thunder director, Jackson also likely doesn't know.

"I had never talked to Peter Jackson about this. I don't know if he knows. I like telling it at parties, that story. But I don't know if he actually knows," admitted Waititi.

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on CBS.

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