Looks like a real home to me. Far too cluttered for a set. They could of course build anything but why bother to reproduce Peter Jackson’s home when you can just plonk a camera in his real one and start filming. Far cheaper that way. The only cost is presumably getting Capraldi and a Dalek there but I guess they had some other reason to be in NZ, or could have found one. And cheaper than flying Jackson and his daughter to the UK.
And yes, the Silmarillion. One bookmark for every film, presumably, suggests
The Verge. I was going to write it’s unfilmable but in some ways it’s ideal film material, so lacking on character and detail that a director’s interpretation would not clash with it, as happened with LOTR and The Hobbit, just lots of epic tales. Can’t see it ever happening though, the book just isn’t popular in the same way, is too remote from the later books, so there would be nothing to hook viewers.
