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."

Comments

One of the years most inticipated movies?

[Monkelectric]

Security experts plan to keep King Kong, one of the year's most anticipated movies, out of the hands of pirates.

I'll admit I opt-out of a lot of pop culture, but I don't know ANYONE looking forward to the King Kong movie.

Is this wishful thinking on their part? Am I completely out of it? Or is this a new marketing tactic?

Re:One of the years most inticipated movies?

[Scrameustache]

is this a new marketing tactic?

Telling people that other people want it? It's not a new one.

Hell, I remember some random romantic comedy in the summer of 1999 claiming in their ads to be the most anticipated movie of the year.

There's lies, and then there's outrageous lies: 1999 is the year where hundreds of fans accross the united states camped in front of movie theatres for weeks to see Phantom Menace, and millions of fans accross the world camped for a day to see it. Now THAT is anticipation.

Good for them

[roman_mir]

If I was distributing movies I wouldn't want anyone to get their little dirty hands on the copies and distribute the copies without my permission.

Technically speaking it is possible to achieve this, it is possible to require ID from everyone going to see the movie, and keep that info in the database. The movie itself could have embedded watermarks of somesort, so that it would be possible to correlate the illegal copy to a specific screening, and by using cross linking with other copyright infringement incidents it could be possible to narrow down the list of suspects to just a few. Then bring out the lawyers and just destroy the mofos who film movies in the theaters and distribute them.

Securing the DVDs sent to the Oscars judges (or whoever) is even easier, I cannot believe how many good quality copies are available.

Anyhow, it should be possible to reduce the incidents of such nature by annihilating a few of these 'pirates'.

Re:What about the Silmirilion?

[Tyler Eaves]

He has the sense to make movies people will actually WANT to see.

Re:What about the Silmirilion?

[Scrameustache]

Why would he focus on the Hobbit when the Silmirilion would make a much better movie.

The Silmarillion is not a good movie story. It's a collection of background notes that were never meant by their author to be published, a dense tome that is read by fanatics of the Lords of the Rings for it's value-adding goodness. Not a product suitable for mass market appeal.

The Hobbit, however, is a light tale of dragon-slaying adventure with characters and settings already familliar to the consummers.

Re:Why so much security?

[elgatozorbas]

I cannot understand why he wants so much security- those who want it for free, will get i sooner or later, and it is not like the storyline is new in any, according to TFA it is a 193* classic.

He wants them to get it later rather than sooner. If the bootlegs appear at around the time of the first screening, many people will not go to the cinema. If the bootlegs appear _after_ the movie was shown in the theatres, the DVD sales may be a bit lower, but the damage will be less.

Re:What about the Silmirilion?

[MikTheUser]

...the Silmirilion would make a much better movie

You simply cannot make a decent movie of the Silmarillion. It covers more time than and features more characters than even the Bible does, and it is utterly impossible to depict some of the characters (The Vala? Liv Tyler was a good shot for Arwen in LOTR, but which actress would you have playing the part of Beauty Itself, i.e. Elbereth? Not to mention Morgoth - Jackson wouldn't even show Sauron in LOTR) and it is even more impossible to cover all that the Silmarillion tells.
You might make a movie of one part of the Silmarillion, like but which? They are all connected, in a myriad of ways, and the book achieves most of it's greatness by that alone. Even the history of the Noldor alone would make for a movie longer than all three parts of LOTR together.

Silmarillion is not movie material. The Hobbit is

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent post may be flamebait, but there's a grain of truth in there.

The Hobbit is a very accessible story that most of us read in school. (In my case, my grade 4 teacher read it with us). It's a straightforward adventure story, it has a "main character", good guys, bad guys, a dragon, and the Battle of the 5 Armies for the finale.

The Silmarillion is much more abstract and challenging material to make a movie out of. How the hell would you write *that* script? It's inneresting stuff but hardly the stuff of a mainstream hollywood adventure movie. The only audience would be *core* Tolkien fans. It turns out that a large percentage of people who consider themselves fans of LotR, haven't read (and wouldn't WANT to read) Silmarillion.

Broken logic mister.

[Scrameustache]

If the bootlegs appear at around the time of the first screening, many people will not go to the cinema.

The people who stay at home to watch the free low-quality bootleg wouldn't have gone to see it at the theatre anyway.

Personally, as uninterrested as I am in yet another remake of King Kong, if I wanted to see it at all it would be on a BIG screem, to enjoy the bigness.

I disagree

[jesterzog]

I'm not exactly an insider (apart from living in the same town as Peter Jackson), but I don't think that's so much the issue here. As far as I can tell, he wants what's fair and what he was contracted for. Even if you love your day-job, you should make sure that your employer isn't ripping you off. They are getting your work out of it, after all. Look how much Newline's benefiting from Jackson's work. I'd be annoyed if they weren't giving me my fair share that'd been previously arranged.

What Peter Jackson loves a lot is making movies (and various other things like restoring WW1 fighter planes). He's built up an entire industry in NZ, based around his film-making and special effects companies, which personally I think do a very good job. If Newline's shortchanged him by several tens or hundreds of millions of dollars (I forget how much it is), it automatically hinders his ability to do everything else that he really loves doing, including his own investment in other films that he thinks are worth making.

In any case, I don't think he's another George Lucas. The telling point for me is that Lucas has been irritating his fans in exchange for the money he can make from them. Jackson's simply fighting with his employer for what he thinks he's owed.

Here's Why.

[simetra]

This is what happens. Geeky little bastard becomes "inspired" by a movie as a child, goes on to make it big, then has to remake the move that inspired him.

Here's a partial list of movies that should NEVER, EVER, EVER be remade again, having been absolutely beaten into the ground:

• King Kong
  
• Dracula
  
• Frankenstein
  
• Tarzan
  
• A Christmas Carol
  

Please join me in ridiculing those who insist that these deserve yet another interpretation!!!

Thanks

Re:Wrong

[Saeger]

Yeah, but it will be "pre-announced", so that you don't get the right to bitch about the profiteering.

Re:Silmirilion was meant to be published

[Scrameustache]

Personally, I think the book is a great work of literature, but it usually doesn't appeal to casual readers (too many names to remember).

That is probably the biggest issue I had with it. After a couple of hundred pages I had no idea who I was reading about anymore.

Re:Does this remind anyone else of

[rob_squared]

I have never before seen such accuracy between a book and it's movie. And you're saying that he bludgeoned it?!

Re:Does this remind anyone else of

[fr2asbury]

I can think of another example, that was at least or more accurately transferred from book to film. The first two Harry Potter movies, which left stuff out to be sure but fairly accurately portrayed everything that got put in. The LOTR movies made some serious derivations but on the whole were much more accurate than most movie to film adaptations. Just ask Stephen King! ;-)

Will the ghost of LOTR ruin this movie for me?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's excellent that Jackson is going to revisit the LOTR et al. universe it really is ... but, can anyone else see themselves four years from now sitting in the theatre, watching the treasure and the dragon and the midget but somewhere in the mist of his mind, hearing the epic music of LOTR and seeing the armies of man defending Minas Tirith and watching the Final Battle, etc....

It's bound to be a good movie ... but lol its going to be hard to sit in the theatre and watch Bilbo climb a hill and think ... an army of 100,000 men ... the White City ... Gandalf the White

Ah, I need something of epic scale again.

But your movies fail to make your point

[SuperKendall]

The problem with your examples is that in every case, they were examples of people decrying the fundamental content of the movie.

The only possible difference negative feedback from sketchy pre-release copies had would come the first hours of opening day, after that it's all word of mouth about the movies qualities as they stand.

But fundamentially I've never seen a case where people hated a poor quality screen because of movie content, and then decided after seeing the movie in a theater that it was in fact good. Those Hulk complaints came along well before even a sketchy version was around to critique, and the comments would have been there regardless of being downloaded on the internet or not.

Basically people can see these low-quality theater rips and decide if the movie itself is good or bad based on content, and the word will get out. That word is going to get out anyway, so why not earlier rather than alter? In the end it makes little difference.

I do agre with you about the Matrix movies, I liked all three just fine thanks.

I don't know why you would defend Gigli in any way though, when even the actors admit it was drek. Yes I saw the trailer.