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Peter Jackson Will Not Be Making The Hobbit
An anonymous reader writes "Due to legal wranglings with New Line Cinema over accounting issues for Lord Of The Rings, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh will not be involved in the making of either The Hobbit or the planned Lord of the Rings prequel." I suppose there is still a chance that Jackson & Co. could end up involved, but at this point that looks unlikely.
I am confused - The Hobbit is the LOTR prequel - Are they doing two prequels?
So filming The Hobbit might be a good idea, as the book has a lightness of touch that most of LotR sadly needs. But getting Peter Jackson to do it would remove any chance of said lightness of touch anyway.
Lack of Jackson in hobbit will cost more than the gain you will make wrangling over the accounting issues.
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Given the size of the book it was inveitable he'd have to emit large chunks of it to fit it into any reasonble time. As it was its , what , 9 hours for all 3 films? Personally I think it was a mistake to miss out the Tom Bombadil section in Fellowship but I guess if he'd left that in he'd have had to have cut out something else perhaps more crucial to the story. Who knows.
the hobbit isn't a prequel. the lord of the rings is a sequel to the hobbit. the hobbit was written first!
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I was just re-reading bits of William Goldman's "Which Lie Did I Tell?", and there's a particularly interesting section, dealing with adaptations. And one of the first things he talks about is that, when adapting, you can't keep everything, sometimes, you barely keep anything, the trick being to, as he says, keep the "spine" of the story and reject anything that won't work on the screen, because books and movies ARE TWO DIFFERENT FUCKING MEDIUMS.
I, too have loved the LOTR books since I was a kid, and I too would have loved to have seen Bombadil in the movies, etc., but, let's be honest: Jackson & Co. made an absolutely amazing film trilogy, by ANY standard you care to measure, so can we fucking end shit like "hideous mess" already? It's not true, you know it's not true, so please just fucking leave it, alright? It makes you sound like you live in your mom's basement, and just annoys the rest of us.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Peter Jackson has amply demonstrated that his skills match up to Tolkien's complexity. There were others who tried LOTR and the Hobbit before, and made a mess of it. So if Peter Jackson is not involved with the Hobbit or a LOTR prequel, then Newline should save its money because I'm just not interested.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Way too much homo-eroticism going on between Sean Astin and Elijah Wood.
Ummm, have you READ the books? Did you manage to forget all of the "hand stroking"? If anything, Jackson toned it down.
It is also an interesting commentary on our society today. At the time, nobody saw this as homo-eroticism, guys were allowed to be friends and be close without being considered gay.
Finkployd
Hideous mess is your meaning, not a fact. I was very very pleased with the LOTR.. so while for you the article might be good news, for me it is bad. I'd have loved Peter Jackson to make the hobbit. I wonder if with 'accounting issue' they mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting Whenever someone brings up the argument that we're stealing from artists when we dload a movie or music, and we kill all music, I hum a little hollywood-accouting tune in my head.
The guy made them a bleepin' 10^9 bucks with the trilogy, and they assume they can slot in any schmoe that can aim a camera?
Yes they do and yes they can.
There are 60,000 wannabe directors out there and with the DP and production staff from the original filming it would not be too hard. Hollywierd is known for butchering and making a mess of things.
Hollywood is known for borderline illegal accounting practices, NO move has ever made a profit, so if you get net points on a film you are royally "fubared" you want gross points as those are the real pay dollars..... dont believe me? ask Stan Lee about the profits he recieved from his Net points on the Spiderman movies and the lawsuits he has going against the studio about it...
There is a long tradition of making up expenses to suck up all profits a film m akes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
come on...from a stylistic point of view, the books are barely even acceptable. The only thing that redeems the books is the fact that Tolkein manages to construct a rather remarkable (faux) history, which he then invites his readers to inhabit. The books are not gospel. They have no particular aesthetic value in and of themselves. Their value is derrived entirely from their content. As such, I would say that any movie adaptation of the Lord of the Rings has about the same responsibility to the original as would any historical fiction. The task, which I think Peter Jackson did admirably, is to construct a compelling narrative from the mounds of useless facts filling the books.
Great, you have an opinion. I'm glad. Unfortunately, it's only that, so quit trying to force an objective standard on a subjective medium. If you enjoyed the LOTR movies, we're all happy for you. Some of us didn't. Some of us are of the opinion that Jackson changed the spine of the story when he changed characters, i.e. Faramir (shows his quality by taking the ring to Osgiliath, yeah right), Theoden (let's make him a pansy so Aragorn looks better), and even Frodo (in Return of the King he never distrusts Sam).
Some of us are of the opinion that the first movie was actually great and Tom Bombadil did need to be cut out. Some of us enjoyed parts of the movies, but overall were upset by the changes we thought were unneccessary.
But in any case, it's our opinion, you have yours, and there's no need to use uncivilized language.
Yes, you can dance to Radiohead.
>Or is this an allusion to The Silmarillion?
Making a movie out of the Silmarillion would be like making a cartoon adaptation of a Fiscal Accounting handbook.
And King Kong was unwatchably, laughably bad.
Is a Director judged on their latter movies? Because if they are, I wouldn't want Jackson to do The Hobbit.[% slash_sig_val.text %]
Sorry, my friend. But you are 100% wrong here.
The story is the story. And that's that. JRR wrote it in a particular way to tell a particular story. If you make changes, you change the story. It is no longer JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. It becomes Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings - a different story.
Omissions, like Bombadil, I can excuse. It's not a change per se, it's an omission. In your mind's eye you can still imagine that they met Tom, they just didn't have enough time to show you the meeting. But the changes. Inexcusable.
If you'd like an example of why people get so torqued over this, consider Frodo. His relationship with Sam and with Gollum as they traveled. In the books it was Frodo, his trusted servant Sam, and Gollum whom he never really trusted. "His promise will hold him for a bit, Sam". That kind of a thing.
But making Frodo take the word of Gollum over that of Sam when they were at Minas Morgul? Exactly *how* does that help convey JRR's ideas better because it's on film???
Short answer is - it does not. It is a change that Peter Jackson thought would be better than the original story, or make for more exciting film, or whatever. And no offense PJ if you're reading this - but I seriously doubt you're a better story teller than the Old Professor.
Omit things due to time, fine. Add a few cute scenes that don't change the story (like the wagon ride with Frodo and Gandalf at the beginning of Fellowship) - fine.
Make a change because you think you're a better storyteller than JRR - no way. If you think you're a better storyteller then write your own damn stories and make movies of those.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
> Like the RIAA's accounting, movie studio accounting is even more devious.
> Whenever someone tries to get paid a "part of the profits" for which they
> deserve, the studios always pull the "but according to our estimates, we
> didn't make money on that film."
Unfortunately, it's not just movie studios and the RIAA. Many business owners do this. 'What? You want a raise? Sorry, we didn't make a profit last year.' Yes, after the principals gave themselves a pay raise, coincidentally, the company broke even and there wasn't anything leftover for the employees.
Business as usual.
You're joking, right? Tolkien is the master of wasting pages. The entire fucking flight from the Shire took roughly 150 pages and consisted of hobbits walking, cowering in the bushes because the Nazgul came by, and pissing themselves in fear. 150 pages and there was no plot development, no character development, no action, or anything else of substance!
Someone needed to take a red pen to that bloated manuscript. Jackson at least did a good job of it. He may have irritated obsessive purists, but he took what was a decent story mired in excessive ink struggling along at a wretched pace, and turned it into a well-paced story accessible even to those who don't have the patience to read page after page of nothing.
Meanwhile, the characters themselves are ciphers --- hobbits are dimbos from Zummerset, Elves are a bit mysterious, Orcs are evil personified: go on, name an ambiguous character --- and the plot has McGuffins galore --- whoops, I've killed Galdalf, better bring him back by mysterious means.
Great fantasy writing: Le Guin.
He could have at least cut out a hour of discussion over the 3 movies about reforging a sword that Aragorn had at the start of the first book. And don't even get me started about the Paths of the Dead.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
It is also an interesting commentary on our society today. At the time, nobody saw this as homo-eroticism, guys were allowed to be friends and be close without being considered gay.
Interesting indeed.
In the "bad" old days, the taboo against male-male sexual relations made a safe space for male-male close friendship.
It was precisely because it was unthinkable that there be a sexual dimension to it that it was OK to show affection to a male friend.
So it's actually the newfangled "enlightened" attitudes that have led to "homophobia", by introducing so much ambiguity.
Well considering that the books were written at a time before everyone could go to the theater to see a movie, I think it's good that Tolkien described everything the way he did. Books aren't written like movies. All good authors took care in describing everything in great detail. They couldn't cheat by using a big screen. They had to use words. I know it's unbelievable. Try to imagine it. BTW, the books pwnd the movies, and I liked the movies. Also, wtf is the other prequel? The Hobbit is the prequel? Dear God they aren't going to try to make a movie out of the Silmarillion are they? I don't think I'd let Jackson around that one either. That would take some serious hacking to make into a friggin movie.
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
To each his own, but don't you think you're being a LITTLE harsh? "hideous mess"? "butchery"?
When I first heard about this project, I hung my head in despair with visions of how Hollywood would inevitably scew things up. "Relief" was my primary emotion when I saw the films.
This was a daunting (impossible?) task to begin with. Based on your typical book adaptations, or your typical film for that matter, can you just imagine how bad they COULD have been? I thought it was an admirable job. You think Steven Spielberg and Jerry Bruckheimer(cringe) could have done better?
btw, I'm glad that they got rid of Tom Bombadil and the barrow wights, and just wish that there was a way to eliminate Treebeard from the plot.
Actually, isn't that exactly the opposite of what a book is suppose to do?
I agree, for important characters, scenes and actions, the more details in books the better. But isn't the basic idea of a book to let the READER'S imagination decide what the character looks like? Or how a sword fight unfolds, or what a valley looks like? In those situations, I'd much rather have a general description from the author and let my mind fill in the gaps.
Unless it is intricate to the story, don't waste 10 pages on something that should only take 2 to say. You don't need to write 3 pages of a song that is boring and has nothing to do with the story. I get it, the Hobbits like to sing with that Bombadil (sp?) guy! Once short song is enough.
I'll get jumped on by a bunch of people, but IMHO the wheel of time series is far superior to Tolken's for this exact reason... ignoring a couple of the latest books where Rand walked across a room, Elayne took a batch, and Nynaeve was surly as usual.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.