Haibane.info

frak.

LOS ANGELES - The estate of “Lord of the Rings” creator J.R.R. Tolkien is suing the film studio that released the trilogy based on his books, claiming the company hasn’t paid it a penny from the estimated $6 billion the films have grossed worldwide.
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The suit, filed Monday, claims New Line was required to pay 7.5 percent of gross receipts to Tolkien’s estate and other plaintiffs, who contend they only received an upfront payment of $62,500 for the three movies before production began.

What the heck is wrong with the idiots at New Line?? Shamus says it more calmly than I can.

Naturally, no word of this at the Official Hobbit Blog. I still hold out hope that New Line will be forced to do the right thing, and that the Tolkien estate won’t be so burned by the experience that they will allow The Hobbit to be made, but it’s obviously not happening this decade.

Warner Studios made a big splash this past week when they announced they were going to ditch HD-DVD in favor of Blu-Ray. The ripple effect of this hasn’t fully played out, but one consequence appears to be that the Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit, one assumes) will only be on Blu-Ray:

According to Variety, New Line and HBO will follow Warner’s lead to side only with Blu-ray Disc. BBC Video, the company behind the popular high-definition nature documentary Planet Earth, has not yet publicly expressed its intentions with format exclusivity.

New Line already positions its Blu-ray Disc products with greater priority than the equivalent HD DVD. New Line’s first high-definition film, Hairspray, hit Blu-ray Disc in late November 2007, while an HD DVD version was only promised sometime in early 2008.
[...]
Perhaps the most important outcome of New Line’s upcoming decision is that the studio owns the rights to The Lord of The Rings trilogy. Should the (second) most compelling motion picture trilogy hit high-definition home video, it’ll be on Blu-ray Disc.

If anything, this means that it’s better to just stick with legacy DVD and get my HD content via the internet. At least until the price of Blu Ray drives falls to the $100 mark or below (territory already occupied by HD-DVD). It also should be noted from the article that part of the reason for the preference of Blu-Ray is again the region-coding issue.

Long Live Smaug!

Peter Jackson, Oscar-winning director of the Lord of the Rings movies, has signed a deal to produce two films based on JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

The filmmaker had been in dispute with New Line Cinema over income generated by the first film in the Rings trilogy.

“I’m very pleased that we’ve been able to put our differences behind us,” said Jackson. “We are delighted to continue our journey through Middle Earth.”

A director for the films - prequels to the Rings movies - has yet to be named.

The two Hobbit films will be filmed simultaneously, with their release planned for 2010 and 2011.

Ian McKellen is also keen to reprise his role as Gandalf. Principal photography begins in 2009. OH MY FRAKKIN GOD!!!!!

There’ already an official forum and blog up. I cant believe this. I mean. I was excited about LOTR and that blew me away, far beyond ANY of my expectations. And that was in spite of cramming the entire epic into a three-movie format. This, though - the entire tale of The Hobbit gets two entire films!

OK, I would still prefer that Jackson be directing, but Jackson only directed about 1/4th of LOTR too (since they had multiple units filming around the clock). In some ways the producer has more power, though of course who knows what the dynamic will be in reality until the names are assembled. It’s clear that New Line and MGM want to tap into the pre-existing fandom to guarantee success, so I am not too worried about “creative interference”.