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Peter Jackson Hints At The Hobbit
Hellboy0101 writes "News.com.au is reporting that New Line Cinema is currently in talks to purchase the rights to the film adaptation of The Hobbit. There are apparently some difficulties with getting the go ahead from Tolkien's son Christopher, who is executor of the estate. When asked if New Line has approached him about the project, Jackson said he has not ruled it out, but not until after King Kong is done. 'New Line, which spent $US300million ($415 million) making the films, is already planning to continue its Rings success with an adaptation of Tolkien's novel The Hobbit.
More difficulties with the Tolkien estate were looming, said Jackson, who added that he would be keen to get involved after he finishes remaking King Kong in 2006. "New Line haven't actually talked to me about The Hobbit. I know there's difficulty about the rights, certainly if they want to talk to me about it I'd be keen," he said.'"
If he does this, he'll ruin a children's classic. LOTR was okay because they were for a wider audience. However, The Hobbit is more about imagination and every child will get a different interpretation. A film puts out one interpretation thus squashing imagination.
If they plan to do it, they better do it quick. The only (I believe) common character of the trilogy and the Hobbit is Gandalf. Ian McKellen isn't getting any younger.
The 90s called. They want their smart-assed remarks back.
What bit of the summary made you believe that someone was saying that 'King Kong' was a 'bigger event' than 'the Hobbit'? I realize that you were probably just engaging in a bit of a karma grab but come on, your comment tries to play off the fact that hobbits are short and King Kong is tall but really makes a jump in logic that isn't there.
Someone should tell Jackson that there's a whole lot you can do for a community besides put up a museum or a monument to what you did with their tax break, and it need not even be an eyesore like that statue he wants. How about building parks and playgrounds? Contributing to local health programs? Financial aid for economically depressed areas? Charities? Libraries? Help for schools?
These and a whole lot of others are ways to give back to the community in ways that really help. And they don't require the permission of the Tolkien estate either.
And the brethren went away edified.
I think the Hobbit, in a screenplay more true to the original book, will work better on film than LoTR, because it's a far shorter and more self-contained story that will translate to the big screeen more effectively. It's not as deep as LoTR, and will appeal to children. Because it has the potential to be more true to the books, the diehards will be happy, and new fans will also enjoy the simpler storyline.
Remember the animated version? It was really goood! I'd imagine that a live action version, using WETA's technology, could potentially be even better.
NO CARRIER
Although it's a delightful children's novel, the Hobbit is inevitably a terrible disappointment after the scope and depth of the LOTR.
I wouldn't put down The Hobbit like that. Even though the details are simplified, it doesn't mean they aren't there. I read The Hobbit, and then LOTR, the Silmarillion, then going back to reread The Hobbit I found that it's remarkably consistant with the materials from the other books (granted, Tolkien did a bit of revisionist history with "The Hobbit", but I digress).
The Hobbit also introduces us to the hardy race of halflings which at first seem unlikely that little Bilbo could even survive the dangerous journey with the dwarves, but later he turns into the most resourceful and most heroic character in the book (very convincingly too).
The only way it would work would be if it was deliberately filmed and marketed as a movie for young children.
I'm not sure it'll be terribly suitable for young children. It's going to have giant spiders biting the protagonists, and the battle of five armies is rather bloody indeed.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
But if you don't like it, no big deal.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Maybe he saw an advanced copy of Cat in the Hat and realized that people will destroy your loved one's creations to make really shitty stuff to get marketing gigs and product tie-ins.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
While LoTR basically is a good versus evil story wrapped in adventure, The Hobbit is an out and out adventure story. It would look wonderful on the big screen.
And it would give a chance for Peter Jackson to prove that prequels (though Hobbit isn't exactly a prequel to LoTR) to hugely popular trilogies can work!! *Star Wars... hint hint*
And ohh, I'd much rather see The Hobbit than King Kong.
King Kong has been done, re-done, updated and re-done. 1930's, 1960's, 1970's. Wasn't there a series made at some point?
The 1933 version was avante garde at the time, being 'movie magic'. But the plot has been retread so many times, it just needs a burial. You can only dress it up so much with CG, but you can't capture the original story's 'wow' in today's time.
Hopefully PJ will get the Hobbit contract inked in advance, just in case....
there is so much hinted at in the hobbit, that was formulating around in tolkiens mind about the world he was about to create, it would be easy for jackson to take a little creative lee-way and rename a few things to make it fit with the full depth of LOTR.
they even mention "the necromancer" in the hobbit, which is a clear reference to sauron, if not just one of his nazgul.
I think it has amazing potential.
Its worth mentioning that content wise, there is almost no parallel between the Silmarillion and the Bible. Combined with Tolkien's stated desire to create a pagan mythological history for England, this makes it pretty clear that its not "Tolkien's rewrite of the Bible".
Moreover, the simple structure of his myths contain, if anything, a parallel to the Gnostic pseudo-christian myths of the 15th century with a creator-god with no direct intervention in the world, not to mention the lack of any Christ-figure, is quite contrary to normal Christian mythos.
"Stumble before you crawl"
You ever notice Gimli says this right after he's finished shattering his axe in a vain attempt to cleave the Ring?
Nerd Rock In Progress
Director Peter Jackson has been given $400 million US to remake the classic movie 'King Kong'. Excuse me, but this is insane...
The remake is being done on the strength of Mr. Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, which has sold (or will have sold in a few months time) over a billion dollars US in box office tickets after costing roughly $200 million to make and promote worldwide. Impressive, yes.
The Lord of the Rings is a dense multi-volume fully realized fantasy that has offered a rich complex story and hundreds of opportunities for using state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery to complement the plot into a strong, enveloping film fantasy.
But $400 million for King Kong?!? This is a flimsy plot about a giant ape who develops an obsession about a tiny blonde human woman pet. (Hollywood metaphor anyone?). Big monkey lives on a distant island; whites come; they capture him (somehow); they take him to New York, he flips out, smashes up some shti, climbs a building, and gets shot down. Duh, end of story.
How is this worth making into a $400 million movie? Or, rather, how is $400 million going to make a better movie than the original or the 1978 Jessica Lange remake? More computer graphic imagery? Of what? A big monkey smashing things in NYC? Didn't we see all that already in the remake of Godzilla? You remember that... The remake of Godzilla that cost $80 million and lost most of it because it was stupid and a completely unnecessary film? How are you going to cover a $400 million investment on a big monkey film?
I haven't seen the new Peter Jackson 'King Kong'. Hell, it hasn't even been made. In fact, the producers are wracking their pointed little heads trying to think of some new angle that will get 45 million people to pay $10 each just to cover the pre-production cost ($400 million film and $50 million in publicity).
But I just know it's a bomb. It's the 'Gigli' of Summer 2006. And it's going to take a studio or two down with it.
This isn't a troll, it's a tragedy...
Thank you kindly,
"There are apparently some difficulties with getting the go ahead from Tolkien's son Christopher, who is executor of the estate".
:-/
Gee, I wonder why... could it be because the lord of the rings' adaption to the big screen was everything Tolkien was afraid of and his son is now starting to realize the old man was right ?
nah, they prolly just didn't offer enough money
lone, dfx
Christopher Tolkien... Common buddy. Stop it.
;) The more people that work in debt to your father, the better. He is kept alive, through us.
You said the movie trilogy would be an unsuccessful adaptation of the book. Yep. A $300 million budget with triple return profits. Nah. It'll never work...
Regardless to ones opinion on whether or not bringing LOTR to film was successful or not, it has brought hundreds of thousands of minds, young and old, to the works of your father and to his books.
I had never read The Lord of the Rings. Never planned to. I saw LOTR, ran and tripped over myself to buy and read those books. I discovered a tangible world of unsurpassed creativity and passion.
Let the dreamers dream. Should Tolkien Enterprises have to look over every painting, writing, thought, or daydream, to see if its in line with your fathers vision?
The LOTR movies are an interpretation of the book, by a handful who loved the book. As cliche as that is, its so very accurate. More lives have been touched by the books than ever before. It is the second highest selling book internationally next to the bible. With Peter Jackson's help, it looks like we might just be giving Jesus a run for his money.
The fans aren't stupid. They know who J. R. R. Tolkien is. These movies have not, and cannot touch that. Don't suppress the creativity of others because your worried it will tarnish his legacy... If anything, these movies, through exploring and digging deeper into the works of your father have only strengthened his honor.
I have a funny feeling that your pops would give Peter Jackson a nice warm smile and firm hug after viewing the movies.
So stop being silly. Lets make The Hobbit.
Not all experience, or learning, is positive, and some things can't be unlearned.
"Polanyi admits that focusing on particulars may improve our capacity to attend to the overall meaning. For instance, when we analyze poetry we might temporarily destroy our appreciation of it but it also makes for a much richer understanding once our attention is returned to the whole. It can be expected that one's understanding will be different from one's original understanding once attention has been shifted to the particulars and then back to the whole, in keeping with the idea that the relationship between the proximal and distal terms is dynamic and an active shaping of experience. The shifting of awareness may improve on previous understanding--as in the case with the poem, but, according to Polanyi, one's perspective can never be the same."
I believe that the contrast is also true, If you see a bad movie (or even a good one) it can forever alter how you view the book. Not always a bad thing, but usually somthing is lost after watching a bad film based on a good book.
Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers were made by some damned respectful people. Watching the Extended Edition DVDs, it's like these people were obsessed with being respectful of the source material, to a point.
Nothing is being "destroyed" here with Peter Jackson and WETA at the helm.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Oops, he's been dead for thirty years. Probably isn't going to be writing another book set in Middle Earth I guess.
The Hobbit was published in 1937. I think 66 years is plenty of time to recoop the his effort. I appreciate the intent of allowing copyright to pass on to one's heirs, but it's been 30 years since Tolkien died. Can't Christopher Tolkien create something of value himself to provide for himself? Heck, he's got to be doing well, and at 77 maybe it's time to retire and let the rest of the world enjoy a work you didn't actually create!
The Founder's Copyright still covers 99% of the potential value of copyrighted works and manages to do it without putting culture under chains.
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In 1976, the Saul Zaentz Co., doing business as Tolkien Enterprises, acquired rights to both The Hobbit and LotR. This agreement included the film rights. Tolkien Enterprises entered into an agreement with WB so that they could film the Rankin & Bass animated version of The Hobbit. Now comes the fun part: WB still has those rights, and they're sitting on them like a broody hen with only one egg.
New Line can't greenlight Peter -- they don't have the rights, and aren't likely to get them in the near future. Rumor has it that a few of the key brass over at the Frog Studio are a little cheesed off about the fact that a bunch of Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, and other assorted mangy fairy-tale creatures have been collectively kicking the backside of a certain boy wizard at the box office for the past two Christmases running. Heh.
Now OTOH, the Tolkien Estate is being a pain in the butt about the idea of a movie museum in Wellington. And for that, Christopher Tolkien can rightly be accused of behaving like the dog in the manger.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
Maybe if you'd just laid down in front of the bulldozer you'd have been alright.
The Rings animated adaptation was doomed partly by the scope of the books, but your reaction's just colored by your having seen the live action first. My kids chose it to rent out last year too, and it had some things going for it, it genuinely did. I'd take the animated version of the hobbits' meeting with Strider over Peter Jackson's; it did a much better job of allowing him to be enigmatic, whereas the recent Fellowship telegraphed that scene badly. (I'm not so into Vigo in the role, he's way self-conscious.) In general the animated version has a lot less time for orcs screaming their lungs out to shell shock the audience, too, which ain't so bad to do without.
Not that they're perfect, but this isn't nearly as much of a train wreck as Attack of the Clones, or not in my book. The adapters did "get" the original stories, they understood the lines of each scene. If the Rings cartoon breaks down, it's mostly because of scope and their production values. And no, they didn't let the dwarves become a running short joke, either, or Legolas a rad surfer dude.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
You need to deepen your thinking a bit, too, temporally at least.
... which means real taxpayers were paying into it, and we all know what came of that.) This breaks the social contract of taxation and implicitly creates a ruling class, which has 99% the rights of our civilization but 1% of the responsibilities.
There is a growing trend to exempt corporations from all taxes, either directly or indirectly. (Enron, as a famous example, had a net government income from all its tax schemes
Corporations have had enough loopholes during the 20th Century to whittle down taxation enough. What's happening now is tax-abatement-whoring -- based upon a desperate and consuming greed that doesn't have the word "enough" in its volcabulary -- that is well on the way to ultimately collapse the so-called "civilized world". The end product will be a form of government by corporate fealty, letting millions starve and freeze out of their supposed civilization, while bribed groups of "enforcement officers" kill and kill like something out of a William Gibson novel.
Many people claim that this won't happen, but these claims are performed as an act of willful ignorance, and are squawks of desperation. Like the flat-Earth majority of ages past, they are wrong. Corporations are blackmailing municipalities left and right by the sheer mobility of their capital assets. This is producing further concentration of wealth which furthers the process of raping the social prosperity.
To nearly sum up this with an anecdote: a local property developer in Toledo OH was whining to the press that his application for a tax abatement was refused by the city council. He said something like "why is the council opposing this?". This illustrates current business thinking, in which welfare is so expected that not granting it is seen as stopping the process of business investment. But the process is only being stopped by the developer's reluctance to invest his money, which is an act of a dangerous elitist that America supposedly dispensed with 2 centuries ago.
In conclusion, I leave you with a paraphrased quote that my memory is unable to attribute at this time: "What people don't realize is that corporations are equally at risk to moral decay in the face of corporate welfare, as the poor are in the face of individual welfare."
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]