One Last Shot for the Stars
Sue Fea

Queenstown can relish one last taste of Hollywood who's who this month as the big stars, cast and crew of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy shoot their last southern scenes based in the resort.

The cast and crew were back filming in the area until the end of this month, movie publicist Claire Raskind said.

About 50 extras and several horses would be involved in filming at Deer Park Heights.

The deer park tourist attraction on the Kelvin Heights peninsula was closed last Thursday until November 1. A huge marquee has been erected on land beside the access road.

Scenes were similar to the last lot of filming around Queenstown.

"There's more fellowship stuff – they're our key group who travel across Middle Earth," Ms Raskind said.

Scenes being worked on now were mostly from the second film in the trilogy, she said.

"This is our last on location stint forever, then we're off back to Wellington to finish in the studio until January."

Filming would finish in the Wakatipu at the end of this month.

All the big stars were in town for the filming with a large number of cast and crew also based at Twizel this week.

"We're shooting some huge scenes up there, really big scenes in the next couple of weeks, some of them on horseback," she said.

Some crew had to stay in accommodation up to an hour away from Twizel. Finding accommodation in Queenstown at such a popular time of year had not been easy.

Cast and crew were all staying in different accommodation, some in residences and some in apartments.