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Hobbit Movie in Four Years?
Antarctic Lemur writes "At the Powerhouse Museum LOTR Exhibition in Sydney, Peter Jackson has said a film version of The Hobbit is three years away at least. Reasons for the delay include the sale of MGM, which part-owns the movie rights to The Hobbit, and Jackson's recently filed suit against New Line Cinema, the other part-owner. Jackson is currently filming King Kong at his new facility in Wellington, NZ. Slashdot readers will also be interested in the high security planned for King Kong's pre-release screenings."
Apparently, he's suing them over profits. rings.reut/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/02/film
The Simpsons already made another remake of King Kong. Move on Jackson!
As far as Bilbo goes, I would wrap in as much of the Simarillion as is possible.
Movie studios have a habit of buying useless stuff from themselves to increase the cost of a movie, thus decreasing the profit and the royalties they have to pay out without actually decreasing their income.
Spiderman's Stan Lee had to sue whatever studio did Spiderman after they said that movie made no profit (IIRC), I think Jackson is having to do the same thing.
I'm basing my comment on one thing: the lawsuit. And I'm hoping I'm wrong. Here's my thinking: when you do something for the love of it, and you take an inordinate amount of time to do it -- money be damned -- you might just create something amazing (although the movie Dungeons & Dragons was a labor of love, and it was unwatchable); but when you get caught up in the movie receipts and the merchandising revenue (which seems to be what is going on with Jackson), you've effectively become George Lucas.
I know that's overly harsh, and Jackson hasn't let me down yet. So I'm taking even my own comment with a grain of salt. But it's worrying, you know? It makes me want to pre-emptively lower my expectations, just so I won't get my ass kicked for a third time (the other two being Star Wars and the Matrix).
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
I take it that you are not a Tolkien fan? Silmarillion was actually submitted to a publisher and rejected (more details available in the endnotes of "Lays of Beleriand", by Tolkien (whichever one you want)). There, in fact, JRR Tolkien is quoted as writing that he hope to publish it some day. The end result of the publisher wanting some more "Hobbit story" but rejecting the Silmarillion was, in fact, LOTR!
Granted, the Silmarillion was never "complete", at least not to Tolkien's standards, but IMHO, it is far more complete (in plot-line and style) some of the junks I read in Sci-Fi (or any other fiction) genre.
When the publishers rejected Silmarillion, they said, not to offend Tolkien, that "rather than a story in itself, it is a mine to be mined" (quoting from memory, so not sure whether my i's are dotted right and t's are crossed right) for other books, and so it became such for Tolkien (you can see lots of elements of LOTR mirroring what happened during the First or Second Era). If the movie-makers had any brain, it should be the same for them: Silmarillion should be a mine to be mined for more movie scripts! They always "defile" the originals anyway, and if they are going to change the original text, they should be doing it on an "incomplete" text as Silmarillion, not the completely-polished product as LOTR (yes, I didn't like LOTR movie trilogy too much) or Hobbit.
What is to stop him? Only the fact none of the movie rights for anything except the Hobbit and LOTR were sold, and the Tolkien Estate has been pretty unhappy about movies being made for any reason, saying they cheapen the book experience (I'm paraphrasing). The snippets of pre-LOTR history such as the Last Alliance were only usable because they were directly discussed in LOTR. Similarly one could cobble together PIECES of the appendices, but they are largely insufficient for any additional full story with the possible exception of the Fall of the Kingdom of the North (there is enough outline there, though little flesh, to make a story, but I don't think it would be that successful). But the Silmarillion core story material is offlimits.
If the bootlegs appear at around the time of the first screening, many people will not go to the cinema.
Why? Is it that bad?
If it's any good word of mouth would drive more people to the actual theaters - I'm not sure how you know it's going to be bad.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Dumbledore was played by Richard Harris, who was born in 1930, and died in 2002, making him 72 when he died of hodgkins disease.
Ian McKellen is 66 in May this year, which is quite a bit older than I thought. Still, here's hoping he's got plenty of time to make more films!
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.