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'The planned sequel to The Hobbit is to be an *original story not written by Tolkien*'

Pretty much like most of Jackson's version of 'The Two Towers', then!

Actually, I wonder how accurate the BBC story is. Jackson and del toro have suggested elsewhere that they intend to spread out the story of 'The Hobbit' over both films, supplemented by material about (e.g.) Gandalf and Dol Guldur:

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/hobbitfaq/#1.1

Since details of events outside Bilbo's direct experience are sketchy (LOTR appendices, 'Unfinished Tales', etc.), they'll have to invent quite a lot to fill in the gaps (especially if they intend to include Aragorn's early adventures).

Because I state openly that the image exists, would my site get an X rating?

Unfortunately, the answer is "probably yes". When the Gollum acceptance speech (from the MTV Awards) was included as a (hard to find, and not otherwise linked) Easter Egg on the Fellowship of the Ring DVD, IIRC it ws going to be re-rated "R" instead of "PG" because of it.

'Will the sequel be an original story? Or is there an existing (unfinished?) story to base it on?'

Jackson isn't really bothered either way. He pretty much wrote a new story for The Two Towers, with a few set pieces from the book (mainly battles) inserted to let us know which film we were watching. And a Hobbit sequel will give him plenty of time to explore the history of Lurtz:

http://archives.theonering.net/movie/char/lurtz.html

explain how the Elves developed the art of Shield Surfing:

http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/7427

tell the sad story of how Denethor became such a messy eater:

http://www.tk421.net/lotr/film/rotk/img/rotk0911.jpg

get Bilbo's friends out of a tight situation with a hilarious dwarf tossing scene:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_tossing#Popular_culture_references_to_dwarf_tossing

and have Agent Elrond turn up with a sword at random moments:

http://productimages1.colony1.net/5851/Elrond%20Bust.jpg

just in time for a bit of gratuitous decapitation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=The_Mouth_of_Sauron

Ian McKellen will be excellent, though.

'Will the sequel be an original story? Or is there an existing (unfinished?) story to base it on?'

Jackson isn't really bothered either way. He pretty much wrote a new story for The Two Towers, with a few set pieces from the book (mainly battles) inserted to let us know which film we were watching. And a Hobbit sequel will give him plenty of time to explore the history of Lurtz:

http://archives.theonering.net/movie/char/lurtz.html

explain how the Elves developed the art of Shield Surfing:

http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/7427

tell the sad story of how Denethor became such a messy eater:

http://www.tk421.net/lotr/film/rotk/img/rotk0911.jpg

get Bilbo's friends out of a tight situation with a hilarious dwarf tossing scene:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_tossing#Popular_culture_references_to_dwarf_tossing

and have Agent Elrond turn up with a sword at random moments:

http://productimages1.colony1.net/5851/Elrond%20Bust.jpg

just in time for a bit of gratuitous decapitation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=The_Mouth_of_Sauron

Ian McKellen will be excellent, though.

Fruedian has already covered the repeat characters.

McKellan (Gandalf), Serkis (Gollum/Smeagol) and Weaving (Elrond) will all likely be there. I also expect John Rhys-Davies to slip in as Gloin, Gimli's father. Further, I expect a brief cameo by Bloom as Legolas when they're in the halls of the wood elves (or did I mistake Legolas' lineage to be some other wood elf king?).

As for Holm as Bilbo, I think he'd do a great job and if they make him look like he did in the flashback it would lend great continuity.

As for the sequel, supposedly it's the bridge between Hobbit and FotR: white council meeting, necromancer's (Sauron's) search for the ring and routing from south of Mirkwood among other events.

As much as I liked PJ's interpretations of LotR, I hope he resists modifying Hobbit at all. There is really nothing that needs to be added or removed. Can't wait to see Smaug, though. I hope they get a voice equivalent to Richard Boone's but not overused. -"I don't recall smelling you before."

For anyone who doesn't know, or who was looking forward to this game back then, this project was originally to be called MEO and was being done by Sierra. It's had a long road since then which put it in Turbine's hands and changed the name... as well as pretty much everything else about it. Here's a link to an old article about it. http://haven.theonering.net/gaming/middleearth.htm l and here is some info involving the axing of the entire original dev team: http://thecan.org/in/me.html

Dear One Ringers,

As you know, there's been a lot of speculation about The Hobbit. We are often asked about when or if this film will ever be made. We have always responded that we would be very interested in making the film - if it were offered to us to make.

You may also be aware that Wingnut Films has bought a lawsuit against New Line, which resulted from an audit we undertook on part of the income of The Fellowship of the Ring. Our attitude with the lawsuit has always been that since it's largely based on differences of opinion about certain accounting practices, we would like an independent body - whether it be a judge, a jury, or a mediator, to look at the issues and make an unbiased ruling. We are happy to accept whatever that ruling is. In our minds, it's not much more complex than that and that's exactly why film contracts include right-to-audit clauses.

However, we have always said that we do not want to discuss The Hobbit with New Line until the lawsuit over New Line's accounting practices is resolved. This is simple common sense - you cannot be in a relationship with a film studio, making a complex, expensive movie and dealing with all the pressures and responsibilities that come with the job, while an unresolved lawsuit exists.

We have also said that we do not want to tie settlement of the lawsuit to making a film of The Hobbit. In other words, we would have to agree to make The Hobbit as a condition of New Line settling our lawsuit. In our minds this is not the right reason to make a film and if a film of The Hobbit went ahead on this basis, it would be doomed. Deciding to make a movie should come from the heart - it's not a matter of business convenience. When you agree to make a film, you're taking on a massive commitment and you need to be driven by an absolute passion to want to get the story on screen. It's that passion, and passion alone, that gives the movie its imagination and heart. To us it is not a cold-blooded business decision.

A couple of months ago there was a flurry of Hobbit news in the media. MGM, who own a portion of the film rights in The Hobbit, publicly stated they wanted to make the film with us. It was a little weird at the time because nobody from New Line had ever spoken to us about making a film of The Hobbit and the media had some fun with that. Within a week or two of those stories, our Manager Ken Kamins got a call from the co-president of New Line Cinema, Michael Lynne, who in essence told Ken that the way to settle the lawsuit was to get a commitment from us to make the Hobbit, because "that's how these things are done". Michael Lynne said we would stand to make much more money if we tied the lawsuit and the movie deal together and this may well be true, but it's still the worst reason in the world to agree to make a film.

Several years ago, Mark Ordesky told us that New Line have rights to make not just The Hobbit but a second "LOTR prequel", covering the events leading up to those depicted in LOTR. Since then, we've always assumed that we would be asked to make The Hobbit and possibly this second film, back to back, as we did the original movies. We assumed that our lawsuit with the studio would come to a natural conclusion and we would then be free to discuss our ideas with the studio, get excited and jump on board. We've assumed that we would possibly get started on development and design next year, whilst filming The Lovely Bones. We even had a meeting planned with MGM executives to talk through our schedule.

However last week, Mark Ordesky called Ken and told him that New Line would no longer be requiring our services on the Hobbit and the LOTR 'prequel'. This was a courtesy call to let us know that the studio was now actively looking to hire another filmmaker for both projects.

Ordes

MGM apparenly owns rights to the Hobbit movie also. Though Jackson may never make another movie for New Line, MGM may not be out of the question?. Another side of the story here. http://www.theonering.net/staticnews/1163993546.ht ml

Here is the trailer in DivX format.

Has anyone ever seen this guy in person? http://img-nex.theonering.net/images/scrapbook/ori g/9263_orig.jpg

I could do you one better. I realized some time between the release of Two Towers and Two Towers: Ex. Edition that the six DVDs fit nicely around the following meal plan:

Breakfast
- The Fellowship of the Ring: Part 1
Second Breakfast
- The Fellowship of the Ring: Part 2
Elevenses
- The Two Towers: Part 1
Luncheon
- The Two Towers: Part 2
Afternoon Tea
- Return of the King: Part 1
Dinner
- Return of the King: Part 2
Supper

-- Slip into coma as cinematographic and culinary bliss envelop your senses.

So there you have it: all eleven and a half hours of Peter Jackson's masterpiece, interspersed with all seven of the traditional hobbit meals. Of course, one should examine http://theonering.net/ for good hobbity meals!

They're too busy running down corrupt wizards?

They're too busy running down corrupt wizards?

TheOneRing.net reports on confirmed and presumed new scenes in the extended edition.

Here is a preview that talks about exactly what scenes have been added (huge spoilers, of course.)

Logically, it would seem that it could be done sooner, especially without another Lord of the Rings film to finish; however, that hasn't been the case. Peter Jackson was quite busy with many commitments during the awards season. Since he was away from New Zealand, he could not cut an extended version of the film. Traditionally, after he cuts the film, there are months and months of work to do to complete the cut - including Howard Shore's additional score and Weta Digital's new special effects.

For the special features, many of the interviews with the cast and crew were completed during pickups for the next film, as everyone was in the same place (New Zealand). Now that all filming is complete, everyone is scattered across the world - making it more difficult to get the interviews to create bonus materials.

It would have been ideal to release it sooner, but we didn't want to compromise the quality of the DVD to get the product in stores earlier.

For the lazy, here is a link to the video.

http://www.theonering.net/staticnews/1054890864.ht ml

Because it's All about Sam

I forgot to insert the link. Mea culpa.

This is really interesting... Electronic Gaming Monthly is reporting that Peter Jackson has EVEN MORE footage that he wants to add to the trilogy, no doubt issuing the double-extended versions.

As long as he's not adding in a CG Jabba, I'm cool with that...

I always liked making a Mozilla Sidebar RSS from The One Ring. It should work with all versions of Mozilla/Firefox, and its rather painless.

Here you go.... http://img-nex.theonering.net/movies/gollum_mtvawa rds_Bband.mov

Thanks! Despaced link

You can also find it online.

I wonder if, perhaps in desperation after what Lucas (*hiss* *hiss* tool of the devil!) and the Warchowskis heaved out this past few years we were all just so damn relieved that the LOTR movies didn't totally blow that we all got a bit carried away?

Many people aren't happy with the films, but it is not appreciated when you voice such opinions.

Personally I think that they were a bad adaptation. Not horrendous, but bad. Some things were done brilliantly, but overall it didn't do the book justice. And most problems lied in the script. Art, makeup, special effects, cinematography, music, everything was fine. But directing and scripting sucked. This is not just MHO, this can be supported by numbers. Go to TORN and check out the ratings. Directing, editing and screenplay consistently get much lower scores than everything else (i.e. for all three movies these three scores are the lowest ones). This is indicative of the collective opinions of the LOTR viewers. Many think that movies were great, but they still rate secondary aspects higher than what Jackson was directly responsible for.

So the movies were far from perfect, especially, as an adaptation. I think the main reason for the acclaim they received were
1) hype
2) 300 mln dollars
3) being based on intelligent story
4) being based on the "best book eva"
5) cool visuals
6) being the first decent fantasy blockbuster

Critics were happy, because the story was complex and intelligent (and PJ rightfully retained as much complexity as he could, although butchering the book everywhere else). The public was happy, because it was the great looking fantasy film with just enough intellegence.

In comparision, Star Wars movies are too simple and the Matrix films (2nd and 3rd) are too complex. I don't like Episode I, but AOTC is very well done (except for the stupid factory sequence). The acting is good, the effects are good, the story is good. Nothing brilliant here, just work well done. The Matrix sequels are excellent. It really does take a few repeat viewings and the willingness to spend some effort, but in the end it is worth it. TTT and ROTK may have been targeted very well, but they aren't very good films, IMO. I flinched every 5 minutes watching ROTK. Honestly, it was so stupid and lame, I laughed or cried most of the time, and not because the movie was good... :)

Unfortunately, it appears to many that the changes Jackson did make worked against these goals, while at the same time he took a very short and sorrowful final parting and dragged it out for 15 minutes, thus destroying all its meaning and poignancy. Jackson's characters and visuals were great; his timing and pacing were sometimes good, sometimes terrible. And most often terrible where he departed from Tolkien's text.

As it is I have heard people who haven't read the books complain that the movies are boring. This is not due to the changes, it's due to how close to the book the movies are. A lot of these people also couldn't finish the books. For them the changes didn't go far enough. Of course had they gone further then even more fans of books would be complaining.

You think that JRR guy knew a little about epics? Having translated Beowulf for example?

Sorry but I couldn't disagree with you more on the character change thing.

I didn't go into detail about the most heinous character changes here so if you want to see what I mean specifically, please see my post at TheOneRing.net.

Poor sod, missed it by three days! :-)

Well, you are kind-of right... "The Lord of the Rings is often erroneously called a trilogy, when it is in fact a single novel, consisting of six books plus appendices, sometimes published in three volumes." (article). See the fact is, publishers knew that no one would buy a 1500 page book (making it what... $20 in paperback and probably $70 in hardcover) so they took the six books and split them over three novels and slapped the apendices on the end. In fact if you go to book stores even now that the series is emensly popular you will find that for the most part the books are sold in the three novel format with *maybe* a boxed set in the 6+1 format and a nice hardback big-ass book.

Maybe a $400 Million Bad Taste redux would be good.
Plenty of scope for effects and I for one would pay $10...

Weather couldn't be nicer for those of us here in Welly. I'm gonna go get me a good seat now, somewhere near the fell beast on top of the Embassy Theatre.

This movie will be eye candy. Look at the way it's being pitched -- not by the supreme acting ability of it's characters, but by the specs of the render farm used to generate the computer graphics.

It's being pitched in Wired on the basis of the technology.

It's being pitched to the academy on the emotional pull of the story. Just check out the trailer -- sure, there are FX shots, but they are far outnumbered by people looking nervous, distressed, hopeful. Good drama lies not in the depiction of battle itself but in the anxiety in the buildup to battle -- something Lucas and the Wachowskis don't understand. But if half the trailer goes to those kinds of character moments, it's a good omen.

I'm all for keeping expectations reasonable, but everyone on this thread is being such a downer on the movie without having seen it. Wait until all the facts are in, EE if you have to, and you will understand why PJ & co. made their choices. To the purists: the books are still there on your shelf and the fact that movies are out does not change that. I'm sorry you don't have an open mind but don't spoil it for those of us that do. Besids, it will definitely be the best Part III of any series since Police Academy: Back in Training.

It's gollum, not Golem.

A Golem is this or this or this.


Yes, I am a Pokemon fan.

Here's Peter Jackson's take on it

Sigh... More word games and rhetoric. That's pathetic. That section of The Consitution is nothing less than an explicit iron-clad prohibition on imposing taxes on out-of-state buyers.

People like you remind me of this character.

You can try to contradict it all you want, but you are wrong. Your pathetic argument amounts to nothing more than "Well, it's ok if everyone gets illegally screwed just as much as everyone else." Your argument is complete nonsense. Screwing people "equally" does not nullify an explicit prohibition against screwing people.

Seriously. The only thing you can offer to support your argument is saying it doesn't mean "what it was meant to say", and then claiming that "the courts", rather than the law itself has the final say. Now, as for this "interpreting The Constitution" nonsense:

Contrary to what anti-American collectivists (known as "liberals" here in America) would have everyone believe, there is no "interpreting" The Consitution. It means precisely what it says. It does not change unless it is amended according to the legally specified process for amending it. No court, official, nor law other than a Constitutional Amendment can alter it. Period. No "if's", "and's" or "but's" about it. Arguments that it can be "interpreted" are nothing more than attempts to hoodwink citizens into doing nothing while their rights and other sections of The Constitution are violated wholesale by corrupt people in the government.

I set the 19MB 'official' version rsyncing before we noticed that /. had linked - and the upload stream onto our binary server disintegrated resulting in the truncated upload which ended up being live for 30 minutes or so. This has been fixed now - see http://www.theonering.net for more information - and once you've got a connection to Apache on our binaries server it's actually quite fast. (You have to queue to get a connection atm, however). This is definitely the version to get, however - any of the 19MB bittorrents is probably the best way to go. -- Arathorn (theonering.net sysadmin)

The TORn link is back up...

Update: After beating the server round the head a bit, The TORn mirror is back! Again, apologies for the earlier inconvenience.

http://img-nex.theonering.net/movies/rotk_trailer_ 480x280_fixed.mov

Also, here's direct links to the danish site (www.sf-film.dk)...

http://www.sf-film.dk/sf/trailers/rotk/
small (4324379 bytes)
medium (9041479 bytes)
or large (19927973 bytes)

I'm getting sh!t speed at the moment from sf-film.dk ...

The frame-by-frame analysis can also be found here.

Could someone out there point out to me a good place to sum up all of the recent LOTR games?

I would recommend, if you haven't been there already, TheOneRing.net's Gaming Havens:
http://haven.theonering.net/index.shtml

No, Grima Wormtongue was ousted.

But the One Ring isn't technology, it's a force of nature, and thus magic.

Tolkein's thesis (insofar as he even had one) was that the One Ring was a sort of technology, inasmuch as it was most definitely not a force of nature -- it was specifically a work of Sauron's artifice.

This is well-supported in his writings; I also ran across an essay on the subject recently.

If you think Argon will kick it's ass, wait until Aragorn gets ahold of it.

[kidding]
That's cuz dwarven females have beards too and us humans can't tell the difference... Geeks are mostly human, or so I am told...
[/kidding]

Before any king can return, New Line Cinema will re-release of the first two "Lord of the Rings" pics worldwide, this time with additional scenes and footage added.

Just two weeks before the Dec. 17 release of "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" -- the final installment of the Peter Jackson-helmed epic trilogy -- the first two "Ring" entries will be unspooling worldwide.

In memoranda sent to exhibitors on Wednesday, New Line laid out a game plan to promote the third film by refreshing filmgoers' memories with "The Fellowship of the Ring" and "The Two Towers."

Plan calls for putting the films on 100-150 screens in top 10 U.S. markets. Many other U.S. cities will have one cinema participating in the special extended edition screenings. Running times for the extended editions are 208 minutes for "Fellowship of the Ring" and 214 minutes for "The Two Towers."

Advanced ticket sales are scheduled to begin in late September or early October on exhibitor Web sites and movie ticketing sites like Fandango, MovieFone and Movietickets.com.

"The release of the third film affords us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give audiences a compelling new theatrical experience of Peter Jackson's sprawling vision for this trilogy," said Rolf Mittweg, prexy and chief operating officer for worldwide distribution and marketing.

The cost, one New Line insider estimated, will be between $10 million and $15 million. Due to the extended length of the new prints, the move is being cast as a promotional tool rather than a moneymaker.

"It is important to note," the memo says, "that these events are produced as a marketing/publicity stunt and not as a revenue generating opportunity" and that media support will be limited largely to the Internet and participating theaters.

Starting the week of Dec. 5, the extended DVD cut of "Fellowship of the Ring" will be released in some 100 or so theaters in the U.S. and in 20 theaters in Canada.

Then, the week of Dec. 12, sequel "Two Towers" will unspool, just a month after having preemed on DVD, leading up to a worldwide Dec. 16 daylong marathon, during which all three films will be shown back-to-back. Exhib guidelines call for a 3 p.m. showing of "Fellowship" followed by a 7 p.m. screening of "Two Towers" and then an 11 p.m. screening of "Return of the King," which will carry over into Dec. 17 -- the day of its global release.

Overseas, it's not yet clear whether all exhibs will be showing the new footage-added prints of the previous "Rings" pics. According to one New Line insider, the decision is being left to exhibs, which will make their requests known to New Line in the next few weeks.

Italy and Japan will not immediately be included in the foreign promotional blitz. Italo comedies dominate that country around the holidays, and corporate sibling Warner Bros. will be carpeting Japan with the next "Harry Potter" pic. Triad of "Rings" pics will instead screen in January in Italy and February in Japan.

"King" is produced by Barrie M. Osborne, Fran Walsh and Jackson, with a screenplay by Walsh & Philippa Boyens and Jackson, based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Before any king can return, New Line Cinema will re-release of the first two "Lord of the Rings" pics worldwide, this time with additional scenes and footage added.

Just two weeks before the Dec. 17 release of "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" -- the final installment of the Peter Jackson-helmed epic trilogy -- the first two "Ring" entries will be unspooling worldwide.

In memoranda sent to exhibitors on Wednesday, New Line laid out a game plan to promote the third film by refreshing filmgoers' memories with "The Fellowship of the Ring" and "The Two Towers."

Plan calls for putting the films on 100-150 screens in top 10 U.S. markets. Many other U.S. cities will have one cinema participating in the special extended edition screenings. Running times for the extended editions are 208 minutes for "Fellowship of the Ring" and 214 minutes for "The Two Towers."

Advanced ticket sales are scheduled to begin in late September or early October on exhibitor Web sites and movie ticketing sites like Fandango, MovieFone and Movietickets.com.

"The release of the third film affords us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give audiences a compelling new theatrical experience of Peter Jackson's sprawling vision for this trilogy," said Rolf Mittweg, prexy and chief operating officer for worldwide distribution and marketing.

The cost, one New Line insider estimated, will be between $10 million and $15 million. Due to the extended length of the new prints, the move is being cast as a promotional tool rather than a moneymaker.

"It is important to note," the memo says, "that these events are produced as a marketing/publicity stunt and not as a revenue generating opportunity" and that media support will be limited largely to the Internet and participating theaters.

Starting the week of Dec. 5, the extended DVD cut of "Fellowship of the Ring" will be released in some 100 or so theaters in the U.S. and in 20 theaters in Canada.

Then, the week of Dec. 12, sequel "Two Towers" will unspool, just a month after having preemed on DVD, leading up to a worldwide Dec. 16 daylong marathon, during which all three films will be shown back-to-back. Exhib guidelines call for a 3 p.m. showing of "Fellowship" followed by a 7 p.m. screening of "Two Towers" and then an 11 p.m. screening of "Return of the King," which will carry over into Dec. 17 -- the day of its global release.

Overseas, it's not yet clear whether all exhibs will be showing the new footage-added prints of the previous "Rings" pics. According to one New Line insider, the decision is being left to exhibs, which will make their requests known to New Line in the next few weeks.

Italy and Japan will not immediately be included in the foreign promotional blitz. Italo comedies dominate that country around the holidays, and corporate sibling Warner Bros. will be carpeting Japan with the next "Harry Potter" pic. Triad of "Rings" pics will instead screen in January in Italy and February in Japan.

"King" is produced by Barrie M. Osborne, Fran Walsh and Jackson, with a screenplay by Walsh & Philippa Boyens and Jackson, based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Sadly, no cirth numerals (.pdf) have yet been published, although their existence is rumored. (See this list of yet unpublished works.)

So, we must await the whim of the Elfconners to discover whether canonical Dwarvish l33t is possible.

www.TheOneRing.net shows spoiler this way: you must highlight the spoiler to be able to see it.

Actually, Return of the King won't be coming until May 2004.

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Brought to you by anonymous karma-whores for peace!

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Brought to you by anonymous karma-whores for peace!