Weta FX

Wētā FX (formerly Weta Digital) was founded in 1993 in Wellington by Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor and Jamie Selkirk to support Jackson's transition from low-budget horror toward effects-heavy features. The company is named after the wētā, a large endemic New Zealand insect, and is headquartered in Miramar — the same Wellington suburb that hosts Park Road Post and Stone Street Studios. Wētā Limited owns the company; the software arm (proprietary tools including Manuka, Lumberjack, and the Tissue muscle simulator) was acquired by Unity in 2021 for around US$1.6 billion.

The studio's defining work is the Lord of the Rings trilogy and its Hobbit successor, the four Avatar features for James Cameron, the photoreal apes of the Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy (Rise, Dawn, War, Kingdom), and tentpole Marvel work including Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. Long-running collaborations also tie Wētā to Steven Spielberg (The Adventures of Tintin), Robert Zemeckis (The Walk), and Denis Villeneuve.

Wētā has won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects more than any other vendor outside ILM — for the Rings trilogy, King Kong (2005), Avatar (2009), and the Apes trilogy — and its motion-capture and creature pipelines remain industry references. The company runs a large in-house training programme through the Wētā Workshop / Wētā FX combined campus.