With the final instalment of The Hobbit hitting cinemas worldwide last month, fanatical fans have been visiting the franchise’s home of New Zealand in record numbers, leading to calls for a new Middle Earth museum to be built in the country.

At present, fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings can visit the Hobbiton Movie Set on New Zealand’s North Island as part of a two-hour guided tour where visitors will see Hobbit Holes, The Green Dragon Inn, The Mill, double-arched bridge and other structures and gardens built for the films.

Speaking at the third film’s premiere in London, Sir Ian McKellen, who plays Gandalf in all six of the Middle Earth-based films, said: "Of course the next development, I hope, is that Peter (Jackson) is going to devise, not more films, but a situation that you can all go to that is as much theatrical as cinematic.

"A living museum where you will actually have the experience - as you sometimes do in the greatest exhibitions of that sort in Hollywood - to go into that and be there."

Lord of the Rings and Hobbit director Peter Jackson recently started to develop a temporary First World War exhibition at the former Dominion Museum Building in Wellington to go on display from April 2015. Jackson has also backed plans for a ‘film museum’ in the New Zealand capital, reportedly one of the city council’s top priorities.

According to a recent survey by Tourism New Zealand, between July 2013 and June 2014, around 13 per cent of all international holiday visitors to New Zealand said the Hobbit films were a factor in their choice of destination. Since 2012, when the first Hobbit movie was released, visitor arrivals have surged to a record annual rate of 2.83 million visitors – up from 2.4 million – and figures for next year expected to rise to around 3.2 million. Spending has also grown 10 per cent to NZ$7.2bn (US$5.5bn, €4.6bn, £3.6bn) in the year ended September 2014.

The use of the silver-screen to attract tourism has proved successful on multiple occasions. Certain cities such as Salzburg, Austria, which was the home of The Sound of Music has used the tactic for decades, while recently Game of Thrones, which uses locations in Northern Ireland, Croatia, Spain and Iceland has been used by tourism chiefs to drive up visitor numbers, while in Tunisia, Star Wars has been at the focal point of a tourism drive.

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