Hopkins Lecture 2024

About the Event
For the love of creativity
Presented by Richard Taylor, Wētā Workshop and Pukeko Pictures
Richard Taylor speaks on his 36-year career working in the world’s creative industries where the fusion of technology and art has allowed him and his colleagues to excel on the world stage. Discover insights and experiences that allow Wētā Workshop to be dynamically relevant in a quickly changing technological landscape.
About the speaker
Richard Taylor is the co-founder of the Wētā companies and co-owner of Wētā Workshop, along with his wife Tania Rodger, who established their business in their home city of Wellington in New Zealand.
With more than thirty years’ experience working in the world’s creative industries, Richard is the CEO and Creative Director of this award-winning company. As a passionate creative at the core of Wētā Workshop, Richard collaborates each day with his colleagues and friends across a diverse range of artistic and technical disciplines. With 380 crew across 7 businesses, the Workshop has grown to become a multifaceted, creativity focused company.
Richard has won five Academy Awards© across three disciplines, for special effects makeup, visual effects, and costume design. He has also received four BAFTAs, three THEA Awards and more than 35 national and international awards for his work within the creative industries. In 2010 Richard was made a Knight Companion of the NZ Order of Merit for his services to film, and voted New Zealand Entrepreneur of the Year, and in 2012 he was named New Zealander of the Year. Richard and Tania are patrons of the Little Miracles Trust and are heavily involved in the Wellington community, giving their time to charity projects and initiatives.
Wētā Workshop has provided the design and physical effects for more than 160 films, numerous television shows, and multiple location-based experiences. Best known for their work on the globally acclaimed The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, as well as the Chronicles of Narnia, King Kong, Avatar, District 9, Ghost in the Shell, Mulan, Thor, and Black Panther to name a few.
Wētā Workshop also operates popular tourist attractions, a digital game studio and produces high-end collectibles. They also specialise in the design and manufacture of location-based visitor experiences, including their 3 Thea Award-winning works: Gallipoli: The scale of our war exhibition; Wētā Workshop Unleashed, a fantastical film FX experience and Aura: Forest at the Edge of the Sky (Haikou Duty Free Mall). Richard has also been named in Blooloop’s Top 50 Immersive Influencer list for 2022 and 2023. Wētā Workshop also operates two retail experiences and their most recent business undertaking, focused on emerging production technologies has recently seen them working with two of the biggest brands in the world by way of future-verse I.P. creation for these companies.
Richard and Tania also co-own the children’s I.P. development and television production company Pukeko Pictures, which developed the award-winning television shows Jane and the Dragon, the Wot Wots, Kiddets, Book Hungry Bears, and reimagined the Gerry Anderson classic Thunderbirds Are Go. Along with their business and creative partner, Martin Baynton, and in collaboration with their largest investor, Shambala - Pukeko has forged co-production relationships with China and has created the first ever, co-production in Childrens Television between China and New Zealand.
Richard has spent more than 25 years working in China, building a highly respected relationship with local and central government, educational facilities, and the creative industries, and has nurtured many strong business collaborations.
Richard was also a founding Board member of Magic Leap, a mixed reality technology company based in Florida. Working with Rony Abovitz over 9 years in the creative development of what is possible through this extraordinary technology. Richard is now working with Rony on a new and very exciting startup focused on the new technologies arena.
Richard and Tania also co-own Stardog LP, a fine art and IP development company that helps young people within their team to realise their own creative endeavours.