[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

For the sake of fairness and there's always two sides to an issue. . .

Often, many sides, depending upon the news agency which reports the story and which of the participants are interviewed and quoted. I read this in a CBC news story and the CBC is very good at checking its stories. It's version makes very clear that the deaths were not on the set per se but were the result of harmful living conditions. Here's that version:

New Zealand Hobbit animal deaths

Originally Posted by Boro

You would expect Jackson and the film-makers to deny responsibility, and it appears none were mistreated or injured during the actual filming. The issue is the "housing" of the animals may have been substandard and dangerous. Of course the company line is "these are disgruntled wranglers, we got rid of over a year ago."

I doubt this will be the last we hear of this story, and so I will continue to reserve judgement on possible mistreatment until more is known.

If we dig a little deeper into the stories, it isn't so cut and dried as a he said/she said. In the CBC version, a spokesperson for the movie/Jackson says that two deaths of horses were "avoidable" and the company spent a great deal of money improving conditions for the animals. That seems to suggest that the company had heard of the conditions and did something to ameliorate the situation. So there is not a straight denial of responsibility from the film company.

Originally Posted by CBC story

Dravitzki, the spokesman for Peter Jackson, said the production company reacted swiftly after the first two horses died, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading housing and stable facilities in early 2011.

"We do know those deaths were avoidable and we took steps to make sure it didn't happen again," he said.

Perhaps the full story is that not enough was done to ameliorate conditions for animals; maybe newline just didn't push hard enough to ensure that problems were overcome.

Or perhaps this story is being used to highlight loopholes in animal care oversight. What more powerful way to point out those problems than the conditions of such a prominent movie, particularly where the animals did not die on the set but as a result of the living conditions created by the movie company.

The timing is interesting, but remember that NewLine was forced via a long and protracted law suit to pay the Tolkien Estate its rightful profits from the movies.