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Tolkien Enterprises To Film Hobbit With Jackson?
cyclomedia writes "TheOneRing.Net has a new scoop on the ongoing Hobbit Movie saga, sourced from elbenwald.de. Apparently the rights to make the Hobbit film fall back to Saul Zaentz 'next year.' He claims that, under their stewardship, The Hobbit will 'definitely be shot by Peter Jackson.'
For the whippersnappers amongst you: Mr. Zaentz is the head honcho of Tolkien Enterprises, which originally acquired exclusive rights to productions of the LOTR and Hobbit material in 1976, prior to overseeing the Bakshi animated version of LOTR."
Who is this Tolkein you are talking about?
I guess this is perhaps why New Line didn't want to hang around for Jackson any longer and why they sounded in such a rush to get it started in their statements?
How does film licensing work, if New Line doesn't finish the film by the time Tolkien enterprises gets the license back are they allowed to publish it still or do they lose all rights to it?
Peter Jackson will write a book "If I Did It". He will also sing a reggae song "I shot the Hobbit" (featuring Gollum as a CGI Bob Marley).
-- Rastignac was here.
... what all these guys have against the Hobbit? I mean, this Saul guy is hiring that thug Peter to have the Hobbit shot... That Hobbit should have banged his wife or something...
May I be the first to suggest that the props team make all the weaponry from Damascus steel http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/1 6/2348254. That way they can join in the rest of us with the huge collective "w00tz" at this news!
They keep getting the same guy to direct. It's like a bad hobbit. Hope his elf holds up.
Well, if there's anything Return of the King taught us, it's the value of a good Steward.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
...if New Line can *start* production before the date of expiry. I can think of two examples off the top of my head of movies which were rushed into production before the film rights expired - Roger Corman's version of The Fantastic Four (which admittedly was never released), and Queen Of The Damned - made by Warner Bros, who also own New Line. I'm sure there are others.
Whether New Line would do this depends entirely on their prediction of profit vs loss. If they think enough people will go and see a Hobbit film even without Jackson for them to get a good enough return on investment, they could well rush a film into production, and let their lawyers handle Zaentz's objections.
You must think in Russian.
Why is this a troll? It's one thing to edit and abridge a story in order to make it fit a motion picture format. It's another thing entirely to take huge liberties with the characters and create fictitious events in order to justify these "new" characters. Some of the greatest drama in Return of the King was reduced to petty bickering between the main characters - in order to leave more room for the "special effects".
I also shudder to think to what they will do to The Hobbit.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Tolkien, Hobbits, Elf's??? All of this sounds as if it has a bad ring to it.
The books were written in the 30s and 40s. I thought they would be in the public domain by now?
Just Me, My Elf, And Eye.
No, looks more like an orc.
I missed Tom Bombadil and the other leftout's as well, but face it he would look stupid on film :)
I didn't miss Tom at all - that would have been silly in a film. I just didn't like all the stuff they did to Faramir - I mean come on the ONLY reason they "went back to Osgiliath" was to allow for more special effects; and the stupid interaction with Frodo, Sam and Gollum (nyah nyah he believes ME not YOU) at the end. Faramir and Sam are extremely strong, principled characters, and PJ managed to tarnish that quite well, without actually adding anything to the film.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/news/comments/?entry id=381433
Looks like Tolkien Enterprises isn't the only one who wants to let Jackson do the job.
Now I really, really liked the LOTR movies a lot. "Braindead" was a hoot, and "Heavenly Creatures" was absolutely brilliant. But those are all films with a very different story and tone than "The Hobbit".
So is Jackson really the best person to get for what is, after all, a "lighter" work? There are, after all, other directors who would probably do a great job with "The Hobbit", and maybe a better one too. (Brad Bird might be an interesting choice, f'rinstance.)
(At this point, I had a great argument about how you wouldn't get the guy who directed "Casino Royale" to do "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" simply because both books were written by Ian Fleming. Then I discovered that they actually did do that back in the 60's. Still... you get my point.)
- Jeff
If Peter Jackson has anything to do with Saul Zaentz, he should take care. Zaentz treated a certain other Peter rather poorly in conjunction with the production of the Lord of the Rings animated film.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I really thought that the Faramir part of the movie was very poorly done. I can understand wanting to make Faramir more of an obstacle than the free pass that he was, but they did it so horribly that I think it was the wrong call. Faramir's 'conversion' just didn't work. I mean Frodo almost hands the ring over to the Chief Nazgul and this somehow convinces Faramir that he's the right person to try to take the ring straight into Mordor? Now, if he had cold-cocked Frodo and handed the ring off to Sam I might have believed it.
However, on the whole I think PJ did a darn good job with the books and I want to see him do the Hobbit. It may have been written as a childrens book, but there is so much of a dark side to it that I think it could actually be a much darker and scarier movie than LOTR. It will be interesting to see how they handle the elves in that one, since they aren't exactly the good guys.
I've never understood the frequent "but the film makers changed the story wah wah wah" complaint - for any movie, not just LoTR.
Film is Film, TV is TV, Books are Books, Opera is Opera, etc etc... it is near impossible to adapt a book or a play to the big screen without changing elements - for a whole variety of reasons. For example, the drama of a play is delivered by actors who are so far away from their audience that subtle gestures HAVE to be replaced by dialogue, for a movie you can lose all that dialogue and replace it with close-ups and reaction shots. Books can allow characters to have narration or internal monologues which invariably looks cheesy on the big screen. The rhythm, cadence and pacing of a book is usually radically different from the needs of a movie.
They are NOT the same. They will NEVER be the same. Whether they are better or worse is subjective. They give out oscars for screen adaptations for a reason. It is damn hard.
Feel free to compare apples to apples - i.e. it is perfectly valid to compare a remake with the original film, but comparing film to book is not necessarily valid. The important thing to realize is that they are NOT mutually destructive. You actually can enjoy the book and also enjoy the movie. Or only one of them if you dislike the other. You lose nothing.
And...a bad film version will not mean that there can never be another film version.
Obviously you aren't aware of how difficult it is to translate books to movies. Some minor or even major changes are needed for the flow of the film. LOTR would not have faired well if Peter Jackson had made the movies "exactly" like the books. For one thing the books were extremely long in certain parts and its not certain how well American audiences would have handled Bob Bombadil.
Yes he changed things but did his dammedest to try and keep to the spirit of the original works. They referred back to the books on every scene they shot and though the movie isn't exactly like the novels it preserves the feeling of dread of desparation felt by the characters. I applaud Peter Jackson on the care, dedication, and attention to detail that was put into LOTR.
Every detail in the movie was scrutinized, every prop was hand made by local New Zealander craftsmen and WETA Workshop. Everything from the armor worn by the different characters, to the furniture, to the buildings, to the cups they drank from where all hand made for the movie. absolutely nothing from any previous film was used in making LOTR, everything was new. Costumes, weapons, armor, EVERYTHING. The making of the LOTR triology was the biggest film making undertaking in the history of cinema. LOTR was a testiment to the genius of Peter Jackson and the guys/gals at WETA Workshop. This increcible attention to detail was their homage to J.R.R. Tolkien who also approached writing LOTR in such detail as well.
You strike me a person who has no appreciation for art at all, and that's sad.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Was I the only person to think they were talking about Samuel L. Jackson?
"I'm sick of these mother fuckin' hobbits in this mother fuckin' shire!"
- A
PJ's explanation of his treatment of Faramir was simply that the character makes no sense. If he's strong, noble, a warrior and "he wouldn't pick [the ring] up if [he] found it lying in the road", then why the hell doesn't HE take it into Mordor? He's the perfect warrior, he's immune to the Ring's influence and he's not a measly Hobbit.
By having him tempted by the ring, it makes sense that he would see that Frodo is better equipped to bear the ring than he.
Now, I don't know if you agree with that reasoning or not, but it was hardly just random destruction of the book's characters, it was attempting to make a character work on screen. I think that PJ's Faramir is one hell of a lot more believable than Tolkien's.
Apparently some people are confused as to who owns what.
Both Jackson and New Line tried to buy MGM's license multiple times in the last decade. MGM wouldn't sell for any reasonable price.
With the expiration of MGM's license drawing nigh, they realized that they finally had to do something in order to profit from it. What's the simplest thing to do? Go to New Line and offer a partnership that puts Jackson in the mix.
What MGM didn't count on is the accounting suit Jackson has against New Line regarding profits from FotR, a suit that New Line is stonewalling, but apparently tried to settle as a condition of Hobbit production, which Jackson didn't like. Everyone involved knows that any Hobbit film is dependent on Jackson's involvement for maximum profitability.
And now MGM's license is about to expire. MGM has to be pissed at New Line for allowing this to happen. Jackson is probably annoyed at New Line for trying to drag his lawsuit into it. New Line is probably salivating at the prospect of finally getting the Hobbit license for themselves, to do with as they wish. They just have to hope Jackson doesn't get it, if he wants it.
If Jackson does get the Hobbit license, wouldn't it just be a kick in the balls if he had MGM distribute it?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it