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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.'"
Learn from the mistakes of others and leave while you're on top! Besides, the animated version of The Hobbit is already a gem.
(Although if you must... you have my sword)
Like beating the Bishop?
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...
It seems really strange that The Hobbit, a story about a 3 foot tall theif, is considered a bigger event than the story of a 50 foot tall gorrilla.
I Guess size doesnt matter.
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
The 50's called. They want their lingo back.
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.
As long as LOTR doesn't EVER become a crappy tv series (probably a cartoon or anime at that)...
I won't have to kill myself.
Esoteric reference.
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.
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
Do not let that guy with the prehensile uvula mangle the song The Road Goes Ever On like he did in the Rankin/Bass cartoon.
Now I wasn't clear from the summary, but are you saying there's some sort of difficulty with getting the rights from the estate? Or that he'll wait until after King Kong? I think you need to repeat it maybe 6-7 more times, just to be sure.
The only way it would work would be if it was deliberately filmed and marketed as a movie for young children.
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.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
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
Also was Hitler's Favourite movie (according to my set of Trivial Pursuit)
hmmmm
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Chris Tolkien Gaurds his Father's properties like Smaug Dwarven gold and mithril. The attitudes seem similar too. He single handedly put Iron Crown into bankrupcy by jacking up the licencing costs a couple of years ago, even going so far as to have the printed works seized and destroyed even though they were printed and delivered while still under license. Of course this is all old news to any of my fellow Rolemaster / MERP players.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_545271.html?m enu=news.latestheadlines
The fabled new character from Return of the King would be an ideal inclusion on this new Hobbit movie. 8)
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
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 they could get Leonard Nimoy to pen the songs for the Hobbit movie.
a ter6.html
He could use this as his resume for the job:
http://homepage.mac.com/evanbaumgardner/iMovieThe
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.
He single handedly put Iron Crown into bankrupcy by jacking up the licencing costs a couple of years ago
Iron Crown had a bit to do with it as well. I've talked with some of their authors, and to a one, they all blame ICE. The causes are numerous. Not focusing on new customers, issuing more regional background material than they did adventures, chasing the CCG fad while letting the RPG base deteriorate, etc. Tolkien Enterprises merely sunk an already sinking ship.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
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!
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.
"Gandalf is not a man -- he is istari, an immortal Maya"
I didn't realize that wizards were from Mexico.
(...It's Maia.)
GL
No, this is a euphemism.
I meta-mod all positive moderation Unfair, because it's abuse of the system.
Bring on Leonard Nimoy to do the theme song; or better yet, we could get Wil Wheaton to do a hip modern cover of the ballad of Bilbo Baggins. CleverNickName, are you up to the challenge?
- Cath
threw the book down and ran out of the room shrieking like a little girl.
;)
As long as you shrieked in Quenya, you have nothing to be ashamed of.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Hitler's favorite movie was Metropolis.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Tolkien Estate
Cathleen Blackburn
Manches & co.,
3 Worcester Street,
OXFORD,
United Kingdom.
OX1 2PZ
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
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.
|>>?
You are in a comfortable tunnel like hall.
to the east there is the round green door.
you see:
the wooden chest.
Gandalf. Gandalf is carrying
a curious map.
Thorin.
Gandalf gives the curious map to you.
Thorin says " Hurry up "
> HIT THORIN
You attack Thorin.
But the effort is wasted. His defense is too strong.
Thorin attacks you.
With one well place blow Thorin cleaves your skull.
You are dead.
You have mastered 0.0% of this adventure.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
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,
I personally blame the Japanese
Ñ'
"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.
And they want their monkey back.
They saw what happened to Godzilla.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
In the audio commentary to the Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition DVD, Peter Jackson mentioned that he asked to keep the set of Bag End completely intact and in storage rather than having it torn down like most of the rest of the Lord of the Rings sets. New Line agreed, and Peter Jackson said that he has a complete, life-sized Bag End sitting in storage, ready to reassemble on the side of some hill.
I think he cracked a joke about building it somewhere and living in it, but hey, this way they can just break it out of storage and rebuild it and it will be the same set from Fellowship... instant continuity.
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.
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."
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.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
And you can not have me. On the behalf of the estate of the Axe, I refuse.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
..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!
There's a big picture of boobies on the last page.
No, seriously.
I have been pwned because my
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:::
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...
(for a *very* fun combination, try reading Do Cyborgs Dream of Electric Sheep? and watching Blade Runner)
Is that the sequel to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
I think that Middle Earth would be an excellent setting for such a game. Even just a single player game would be wicked. I'd love to play as an Ent or an Orc or something.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
It is not insightful, it is flat out wrong on so many things wrong.
;)
Scroll to the top and reread the story.
Wait, don't both here it is:
"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. "
That plainly says they spent the money on the LoTR series, not on the King Kong Remake. Further hints include the little know fact that "films" is plural, whereas "the King Kong remake" is singular.
Oh, and not to pick any nits or anything, but Universal is the one paying Jackson to do the remake of King Kong, and has budgeted 100 million to the project.
The only "insight" is that Simonetta didn't seem to read the original post. The tragedy is that s/he went off on poor defenseless strawman, and got a +5 insightful.
Just goes to show that put enough monkeys at a keyboard and let them bang away, eventually they'll mod anything and everything up to +5 insightful.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
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!"
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.
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.
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.]
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
In situations like this, the parent company is perfectly happy to take a hands-off approach, because it's in their best interest in the long run. In other words; let the kids squabble. It'll mean that more money goes into AOL/TW's pocket if anything gets done. And if not, the parent company hasn't lost anything.
Chalk up another one for the Big, Evil, Faceless Corporation (TM).
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...