Photograph by: CNBC

Richard Taylor: The Effects Wizard
Title: CEO, Weta Workshop
Notable projects: King Kong, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Night at the Museum, X-Men: The Last Stand
Years in business: 20+

If you pit thousands of Orcs against thousands of Storm Troopers, who wins? If you’re talking special effects, it’s the Orcs. The evil foot soldiers of the Lord of the Rings trilogy have marched special-effects expert Richard Taylor to the top of the line of cinematic technicians, where he’s shoved George Lucas and his Industrial Light and Magic from their long-entrenched position.

James Cameron helped. The Oscar-winning director tapped Taylor and his New Zealand-based Weta Workshop to work on his latest blockbuster-in-the-making, the $200-million-budget sci-fi epic Avatar, to be released next year. In choosing Weta, Cameron effectively jilted his collaborator on Titanic and Terminator 2, and called Weta a “leader in visionary effects.”

Taylor has won five Oscars and four Bafta awards, and since the release of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Taylor has continued to pile up the successes, creating the effects for Night at the Museum, which rang up $251 million in global ticket sales, and X-Men: The Last Stand, which grossed $234 million worldwide. The Lord of the Rings trilogy took in close to $3 billion in ticket sales in all. His company’s other big project right now is the upcoming remake of the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still for Fox, likely due out at the end of 2008.

Taylor started his effects shop in the back room of his Wellington apartment in 1987. He later collaborated with Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, a fellow Kiwi, on the cult hit Heavenly Creatures before the pair formed a partnership to expand the effects shop, calling it Weta after a species of large New Zealand bug. A company that had only a handful of workers in the late eighties, Weta now employs a staff of more than 500, all creating the latest advances in effects-making art. Success is good, but Taylor says it has not made him complacent.

“We cannot rest on our laurels,” he told the New Zealand Press Association after nabbing the Oscar for best visual effects for King Kong in 2006. “Weta has to compete for the work like every freelance company, put in a cost-effective bid, and do an incredibly high-quality job to...demonstrate we are worthy of the next job.”