MGM and Warner Near On Deal For Hobbit Films 222
Jamie found an NYT story that says "After months of negotiation and delay, Warner Brothers and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer are on the verge of an agreement that would allow the director Peter Jackson to begin shooting a two-part version of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit early next year." The production has struggled recently with issues with unions, and a fire.
Re:Peter jackson... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:bummer (Score:3, Informative)
Hash, Boo, Valvoline
Clean, Clean, Clean for Gene
First, Second, Neutral, Park
Hie thee Hence, you leafy Narc!
(always wanted to do that)
Re:The cartoon was better (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Peter jackson... (Score:4, Informative)
It wasn't what was cut so much as what was changed:
Merri and Pippin weren't bumbling fools who accidentally kinna tagged along, they were dear friends who wanted to help and wouldn't let Frodo go without them.
There were no elves at Helm's Deep.
Faramir was a better man than his brother and didn't try to take Frodo or the ring back to Minas Tirith.
Shelob was a fabulous ending to the Two Towers but lost drama in the middle of RotK.
Aragon wasn't hiding from his heritage, he carried the broken blade with him as a reminder of his destiny (although he was cynical about it).
Arwen wasn't a bad-ass who could out-class the wraiths, Glorfindal was the bad-ass warrior who afforded the hobbits some protection so they could get to Rivendell.
Just a few examples off the top of my head, the main thing was how many character that were fundamentally "wrong" when compared to the books.
Re:Peter jackson... (Score:5, Informative)
I was always under the impression that the hobbits were not so easily corrupted by the ring, because their race had never wielded rings of power nor had any made for them, unlike the elves, dwarves and men.
Gollum was a Hobbit [cro.net]
Re:Peter jackson... (Score:5, Informative)
What I got from both the books and the movie on that was simply that Hobbits don't really give two shits about power. Tolkien hammered on this concept until it hurt, and Jackson remained pretty true to that concept. They intentionally choose a simple life, they have little interest in controlling (or, let's be honest, even helping) anyone outside their borders, so the whole concept of a ring that gives absolute power has little meaning. The Ring can corrupt them (see Smeagol/Gollum and Frodo). Hell, even Bilbo got corrupted by it to an extent, but he managed to hold out for quite a while because he didn't know what it was.
The only people who could bear the Ring are those who could wield it (limited to a population of one, named "Sauron") and those to whom it would not occur to try.
Bilbo never had a clue what the Ring was, or what it represented. At least not until long after it was out of his hands, and I'm not sure he really knew anything other that it was a burden to Frodo, then forgot about that soon after. To him, it was a magical little shiny that allowed him to avoid unpleasant encounters and skulk around. He didn't have buttons the Ring could have pushed to seek absolute power. He didn't know about it, and didn't care, other than the small and insignificant uses he put it to. Even so, it took threats from Gandalf to get him to set it aside, and it still gnawed at him.
Frodo knew what he had from fairly early on, but lacked the sort of desire for power the Ring could leverage. Even so, the Ring did work on Frodo at the end. He was unable to cast it into the fires and actually started to try and wield it, and it fell on Gollum and a bit of clumsiness and happy chance to finally destroy the Ring.
Hobbits are also insignificant to the powerful to the point of near invisibility. Give the Ring to an Eagle, and he'd be spotted and intercepted, probably before he crossed the border into Mordor, if his own sense of power didn't turn his purposes to that of the Ring's first. No one could wield it without Sauron being aware of it (and eventually being subverted by it), and no one could openly fight past Sauron and into Mordor without wielding it. It was only through stealth that Frodo managed to get the Ring into Mordor without being immediately caught.
Remember, all of the people who understood the ring and understood power (Gandalf, Elrond, Aragorn, Faramir, Galadriel, etc) were strong enough to reject the ring but wise enough to understand that they were not strong enough to control it or even handle it. Boromir was weak enough to be unable to reject the ring, and though he managed to reject it briefly it was really only Saruman's orcs killing him off that saved him from eventually succumbing to its appeal and attempting to wield it. Denethor was weak enough that the mere concept that it slipped through Faramir's fingers was enough to drive him batshit crazy.
No one who was strong enough to understand what the Ring truly was would be strong enough to carry it for any length of time. Its power was too appealing.
Re:Two parts? (Score:3, Informative)
I think they should do an entire HBO vignette series out of the Silmarillion. There's lots of good fodder in there that would distill down nicely to a 3-story episode, or a multi-part story arc or two. Plus they can bring on multiple actors, directors and writers to suit the individual stories.
And can you seriously tell me that you don't want to see an epic battle against a horde of Balrogs? Or an invasion of an armada so vast that the only way to defeat them is to crack the planet?
Re:Also, they tried to bilk Jackson out of LOTR $ (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know the specifics of the deal but I understand Jackson did not agree to percentage of profits. He agreed to percentage of gross revenue. My understanding was of the disagreement had to deal with licensing rights [nytimes.com]. Jackson was to get revenue based on the licensing. NewLine Cinema is part of Time Warner. Jackson is alleging that NewLine sold the rights to other Time Warner subsidiaries in a closed system for far less than what they should have gotten. This way on paper NewLine gets less revenue for the rights, but overall, Time-Waner wins because they don't have to pay people like Peter Jackson (and the Tolkien estate) as much money.
For example if NewLine were to bid out the TV rights of the films, they might be worth $10 million (I made up these numbers). However, in a closed system, NewLine just sells it to TNT (a Time-Warner subsidiary) for a mere $2 million, then Peter Jackson makes less money. However TNT (and thus Time-Warner) saves money. Another aspect of the suit is that Jackson doesn't believe the numbers that the studio gave him (It was $2 million but TNT gave a $3 million kickback to NewLine). So he asked for an audit. That is what made the Jackson suit dangerous to the studios. The studios would not like others looking into their accounting at all.
Re:The cartoon was better (Score:2, Informative)