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.'"

Comments

My personal opinion

[Penguinshit]

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.

Re:My personal opinion

[Penguinshit]

the Silmarillion

Wow.. You could do a trilogy just on that amount of material alone. Of course, by then I expect it all would have been thoroughly "Lucas-ized" and the Tolkien Estate's worst fears would be realized.

Could you imagine a 3-hour film with vignettes comprised of various parts of "Unfinished Tales"? That'd be like a Tolkien "Creepshow" (which was based on short stories by Stephen King).

LOTR actors

[Xpilot]

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.

Re:LOTR actors

[mclove]

I think Ian Holm might be a little too old... I mean yes, they *could* make him look younger with makeup (as they did for the flashback in FotR), but the man's 72 and pulling that look off for the entire movie would be rather difficult. PJ doesn't seem like the sort of director who'd jump through hoops for the sake of preserving a tiny bit of extra consistency with the trilogy.

Andy Serkis, on the other hand... I can't imagine anyone else playing Gollum now. And just think of it, a crowded theater sometime in the winter of 2009, Bilbo in a cave, then a familiar CGI face and the first whisper of "Precious"... think of the beginning of the opening crawl for Episode 1 (when we didn't know how badly it would suck) and multiply it by 10 and that's what you'll get.

And of course we have to have Ian McKellen playing Gandalf too, simply because he loves doing it and there's no one better out there for the role.

It'd suck. Guaranteed.

[gonerill]

Ask anyone who ever read the Lord of the Rings as a kid and then went and read the Hobbit afterwards. Although it's a delightful children's novel, the Hobbit is inevitably a terrible disappointment after the scope and depth of the LOTR.

The only way it would work would be if it was deliberately filmed and marketed as a movie for young children.

Re:For the Community

[redink1]

I have my doubts that a statue and a museum devoted to the props from a single movie, no matter how popular that movie was at the time it was released, could be that much of a draw.

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.

Re:Please, no hobbit!

[dandelion_wine]

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.

Re:Estate needs to pull its head from it's ass

[|>>?]

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.

just saw Return of the King

[keshet]

..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!

Re:Christ's Lineage passage

[jdavidb]

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.

Re:King Kong Bomb

[willtsmith]

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.

no he can't - already being done by Shrek director

[count0]

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