Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I've read everything Tolkien many times over. While I didn't feel the Jackson movies were completely honest to the books, I can understand his explanation regarding pacing and whatnot as it applies to the visual medium.
I really enjoyed the first two of the Trilogy, and am very much looking forward to the third.
If Jackson wants to take on The Hobbit, I'd be very interested in seeing the resulting work.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
I wonder if they can all get Ian Holme, Ian McKellen, Hugo Weaving and Andy Serkis to reprise their roles as Bilbo, Gandalf, Agent Elrond and Gollum. It would be cool if it were kept consistant with LOTR.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
The only way it would work would be if it was deliberately filmed and marketed as a movie for young children.
A museum and tourist landmark would actually provide a long-term economic boost that could improve the NZ community by bringing in tourists from across the world (and hence their money).
A one-time donation would be great, but wouldn't do much to actually improve the community.
Also was Hitler's Favourite movie (according to my set of Trivial Pursuit)
hmmmm
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
What are you smoking and where can I get some. The Hobbit is as much for adults as for Children. Normal children are perfectly capable of imagining something different than what they see in the theater if they read the book at some other time. Did you ever stop to think that maybe it is you that is lacking imagination?
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
what exactly is Christopher Tolkien's problem?
According to one Tolkien writer (forget who), Christopher made his fortune off of "his daddy's wastepaper basket scrapings." I thank him for getting the Silmarillion out, but most everything afterwards was pretty pointless. He should have donated all the wastepaper basket scrapings to a library, instead of trying to edit them into commercial books.
His problem is that he's still leeching off of dear old dead dad.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I would be forced to agree with you with nearly any movie (or series of movies) such as The Matrix, Star Wars, Titanic, and what not... but not The Lord of the Rings.
If you happened to catch the extra features on the Extended Edition of The Fellowship of the Ring (and to a lesser extent The Two Towers), you'd see that they made literally tens of thousands of swords, pieces of armor, costumes, helmets, everything. Heck, every dang mug from the Prancing Pony was custom made.
And then there are the Uber Cool 'Bigatures', like the two towers, the Black Gate, and others, not to mention the various sculptures of Gollum and Treebeard.
Weta Workshop's work is utterly amazing, and if I had any reason to go near New Zealand or Australia, I'd definately stop at that museum.
My son could not stand waiting for two years to see the end of the tale after seeing the Two Towers that he started reading the books.
Even though we have the DVDs.
Maybe my answering his numerous pleas to tell him what happens next with "You'll have to read the book." and sticking to it after The Fellowship of the Ring had something to do with that.
When we got the DVD of TT, he proudly pointed out all the spots where the movie deviated from the book. I may have to bring duct tape with me to the Return of the King to keep him quiet.
All fine and well to play devil's advocate, especially when it makes the other guy seem narrow-minded.
But speaking from personal experience, if I ever had a mental image of the Kwisatz Haderach, it's long since morphed into Kyle MacLachlan. And I must have read LOTR... (lets not exaggerate here...) say 20 times. I'm positive I had a mental image of Frodo. What was it? I have no idea.
Is it really all that earth-shattering to admit that movies tend to burn an image into one's mind in a way that overpowers the changeable visions of the imagination? (that being said, I don't know how many times -- always a surprise -- in the past month I've thought I saw something on tv or in a movie and realized that I read it and the mental image is so strong I could swear I saw it somewhere till I remembered the source. That, however, does not diminish the argument that an external visual representation of the same thing couldn't extinguish that mental image)
Personally, I'd like to see P.Jackson's version for the sake of consistency of vision, not because I'm mentally lazy (though I am most assuredly that, paraphrased the man, er, Dude). That and to prevent Bakshi from wreaking more ruin.
As I said, IMO he needs to pull his head from his ass.
My point being - not made very well I suppose - that in order to preserve the Tolkien legacy, things like films, museums and statues are a pretty good way.
I suppose you could argue that the profits from the movie, rather than spent on a museum should instead be spent on an endowment fund to benefit budding writers, or something.
The way I see it, Peter Jackson wants to preserve the effort put into the movie, thank New Zealand and promote Tolkiens' work.
AFAIC, standing in the way of his proposals is just plain silly.
But, if someone can point out the flaw(s) in my comment(s), I'd be happy to listen.
|>>?
Is your argument that "I've seen some very moving movies in my time, and read some awful books." asserting that visual media *is* 'superior' to books?
Or simply that there is no cause to believe either assertion. I dont mean to get on your case, but it seems that your comment was more derisively pointed towards the idea that it is ridiculous to assume books are superior to movies. Strange, especially in a case where the movies are essentially an homage to the books and the author.
Haha. You outed yourself with the use of the word "prostitute." A Tolkien purist.
Guess who sold the movie rights to his works specifically for the purpose of more money? Guess who even offered suggestions for editing out parts of the story for movie adaptations, such as cutting out the "unecessary" Helm's Deep?
People like to attribute all this stubbornness to J.R.R Tolkien, but he was as much aware of the difficulties in adaptation as anyone. He was changing his core mythology all the way until the end and even rewrote parts of the Hobbit to make it fit. I think he wasn't any more strict about his story than any other author. But people like the image of the stubborn old English professor with the pipe who wrote about hobbits.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I prefer Leviticus 23:13
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
..at a screening for reviewers (my mother is a reviewer) in NYC
No spoilers:
- Well another great chapter awaits!
- The battle scenes are stupendous, quite exhausting
- It is *long* (we didn't get an intermission)
- There are a couple of Monty Python-like lines which although not intentional drew some laughs
- The end is kind of soppy (well what did you expect)
- Towards the end it felt like Spielburg was on the job, squeezing out every last ounce of emotion
- Gandalf for president!
Why is there always so much bitching about every sequel that comes out (Reloaded sucked, X2 sucked, Two Towers sucked, blah blah blah). The fact of the matter is that Two Towers was a good movie, and you're expectations are getting out of hand. The first movie was great, and then thing about great movies is that they are hard to match, much less top. Had this much talent and effort gone into any other movie that wasn't the sequal to Fellowship, it would be up for best picture. Everyone expects these movies to be uber-fantastic and if it falls short in any respect compared to the first movie (or your own expectations), it automatically sucks. We've seen the same thing in M. Night Shamalan's movies. The sixth sense was a great movie, but to match that is quite a feat, and thus Unbreakable and Signs (Two very good movies) ended up "sucking" to everyone. Hell, you even see this kind of behavior in regards to sports teams. If the Yankees don't win the world series, they suck. Nevermind that they've won the AL and been to the world series twice in the last 3 years, if they aren't the champions, it means they suck. Get some perspective on things people!!! :::Angry Rant Off:::
...the dwarfs acting like Three Stooges (or twelve in this case) like Gimli does in LotR trilogy?
Will Gandald have a secret lover (played by Lucy Liu) who will slay Smaug with her bow and arrow?
Maybe a $400 Million Bad Taste redux would be good.
Plenty of scope for effects and I for one would pay $10...
This is unique situation though
As the studio already burnt pj on it before he even started LOTR. Some of this money is going to be reparation and insurance to make sure they don't scrap it again.
And as I mentioned before he is contracted to provide it on time and at budget, or it comes out of his pockets - If hes going to assume risk, it seems only fair to be paid more.
Actually, if you read the article, you should notice that New Line spent $400 million on the LOTR movies NOT King Kong. King Kong hasn't even been cast yet, so finances are probably a ways off.
I'd love to see a good film adaptation of the Silmarillion, preferably over two to three films, so the full sweep is conveyed. Imagine wars between mighty Noldorin princes and their elven armies and the Balrog-led legions of Morgoth...
+++++++
"Look, dear, it's a crazy hairy scary man!"
It is still important to Christians today to have a record of the fact that Christ was descended from David, since that was prophesied and we take those prophecies as proof of His deity.
When I was a boy my parents told me to skip all those genealogical passages. As a teenager, however, I decided that if they were in there they must be important, so I adopted a policy of making myself read them each time I come to those points in the Bible in my regular reading. (I don't go seek them out if I'm just thinking I feel like reading some of the Bible, but I don't skip them in my regular scheduled reading as I go through the Bible each year or so.)
What I found is that while for years it was almost impossible to even pay attention to them, gradually as I became more and more familiar with the rest of the Bible the genealogies took on meaning as a sort of review of what I've read. When I read through the genealogy of Christ, I have a capsule review of David, all the kings of Judah that came after him, the exile of Israel, the restoration under Zerubbabel, and other important events of the Old Testament. Now, I can see how if these events are unimportant to you then the genealogies would continue to be unimportant. :) But for those who like me believe the events in the Bible are God's way of teaching us how to live, those capsule reviews have begun to help me.
A few years back we had a special event at church where we were taught a series of hand-motion mnemonics to remember most of the events in the Old Testament. (Apparently there's a comparable set of mnemonics for the New Testament, but we haven't had the program for that.) At that point I had only recently started to notice that the genealogies were starting to have meaning to me, and I remember having the sudden epiphany: "Hey! The genealogies are God's mnemonics!"
For the record, there are tons of genealogies in the Bible, often quite repetitive. (That's a lot of review.) The book of Genesis contains quite a few as it relates the earliest ancestors of the human race and the Israelite people (those are the ones my parents originally told me to skip). The line of King David is narrated in great detail, there are many records of the major families of Israel, and the book of Chronicles (the last book in the Hebrew order of the Old Testament) begins with a gigantic genealogical summary from the first man, Adam, all the way down to the author's day. Then, of course, the New Testament contains two genealogies of Christ; one through Joseph, and one through Mary.
I hope people find this post interesting, even if they don't agree with my religion.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
The apostrophe indicates letters missing *and* possesion not plurals.
Nope. If you pluralize something that's not a word, you use an apostrophe plus S.
tables
chairs
assholes
ROMs (it's an acronym pronounced like a word)
BUT:
CD's (an acronym pronounced like letters)
80386's
1950's
If you choose to pluralize an abbreviation, you end up with:
'50's
Looks funny, but it's correct. Most writers who can distinguish their assholes from their elbows simply avoid the situation entirely by either writing "1950's" or spelling out "fifties."
Jackson is now a studio onto himself. He's just like Lucas. From that standpoint, he handles the production end, New Line is the promoter and distributor. It's a simple business arrangement.
BTW, I am absoluetly amazed at the amazing film capabilities in New Zealand. It shows you why Lucas stays AWAY from hollywood (his stages are in London). There is too much trash and hangers on in Hollywood.
The massive stuff that Weta Digital has done will make them a rival to Industrial Lights and Magic. I could see them licensing out that stuff and making a fair amount of money from the other special effects houses.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Walden Media already has options on all 7 Narnia books. Live action The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is already in production, with Andrew Adamson directing. More here http://www.walden.com/lww.html
I would handle this by making Pippin and Merry the narrators. They would be telling the tale to hobbit children (the movie would open with the scouring of the shire, then the kids would ask to tell the story about Bilbo).
During the story they would flash back to Merry and Pippin squabbling about the details. In some cases they would show Merry's version and Pippin's version. Sometime more childlike sometimes more gruesome.
What would be 100% essential is to show how Bilbo initially hid the nature of the Ring from readers. He kept a separate copy of "Their and Back Again" for his own uses. Basically, one would tell the "redacted" version. The other would counter "you should tell them the real story", etc....
The interaction of the narrators with the Hobbit children would be what made the tale magical. Different narrators would portray the Orcs(Goblins) in different ways. That would show up in the screen.
What is certain is that the terrible caricature of the Murkwood elves from the Cartoon would have to go. Merry and Pippin's experiences with Legalos would make their impressions of those elves very clear.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
From news.com.au:
"We communicate daily and say nothing. We have rebuilt the Tower of Babel and it is a television antenna." -- Ted Koppel