Despite the positive recent news that The Hobbit has finally gotten a greenlight and Peter Jackson really is planning to direct, the issue of where the movie will shoot is still very much unsettled. You may remember that Jackson has been squabbling with local New Zealand actors' unions over their claims that he's not fair to actors, and a few weeks ago he loudly threatened to move production to Eastern Europe if they didn't back down.

Now, even with production ramping up, Jackson is still considering moving Middle Earth away from his home country. Vulture got his hands on a press release from Jackson and producer Fran Walsh that says Warner Bros. is coming to New Zealand next week "to make arrangements to move the production off-shore." The bulk of the message is calling out NZ Actors' Equity for acting unprofessionally and irresponsibly during this process, but Jackson ends it with a pretty strongly worded threat to show how serious he is about bailing from his island nation:

NZ Equity's unjustified industrial action against The Hobbit has undermined Warner Bro’s confidence in New Zealand as a stable employment environment, and they are now, quite rightly, very concerned about the security of their $500m investment. Unfortunately lifting the blacklist does nothing to help the situation. This will be the start of a domino effect, as word of NZ's unstable employment environment, registers with film investors and studios, world-wide.

If you buy Eric's theory that The Hobbit is simply cursed at this point, well, I think you just got more evidence for the file. More on this as further angry e-mails are inevitably sent.