{"id":10,"date":"2006-10-02T08:19:35","date_gmt":"2006-10-02T15:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=10"},"modified":"2007-08-06T20:36:21","modified_gmt":"2007-08-07T03:36:21","slug":"whats-going-on-with-the-hobbit-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2006\/10\/02\/whats-going-on-with-the-hobbit-film\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s going on with the Hobbit film?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s going on with the Hobbit<\/em> film?<\/p>\n

Kristin here:<\/p>\n

While David is in Vancouver enjoying seeing films and meeting filmmakers, I am at home preparing to make the final changes in my latest book, The Frodo Franchise: The Lord of the Rings<\/strong> and Modern Hollywood<\/em> (to be published by the University of California Press next summer). The copyedited manuscript lands on my desk mid-week, and I need to do some polishing and updating. I\u2019m not used to writing about ongoing events, and the Lord of the Rings<\/em> franchise has been rolling merrily along since I sent in the manuscript earlier this year.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s suddenly a LOT of updating that needs to be done. In July, Electronic Arts announced another in their series of licensed videogames, \u201cThe Lord of the Rings: The White Council,\u201d to be released late next year. (Into my chapter on videogames that goes!) On August 29, New Line released a third round of DVDs of the trilogy, including the long-awaited candid, behind-the-scenes documentaries by Costa Botes. (My DVDs chapter needs to include that!) September 18 saw a press release from Houghton Mifflin that it will be publishing a \u201cnew\u201d Tolkien novel next April (edited from drafts by J. R. R.\u2019s indefatigable son, Christopher). OK, that\u2019s the book franchise, not the film one, but it should feed a general enthusiasm for things Tolkien next year.<\/p>\n

For film fans, though, the biggest news came buried in a front-page story in Variety<\/em>\u2019s September 11-17 issue. The story\u2019s focus was on the revival of the venerable MGM studio and how it will now start producing big-budget films again. The bombshell came in this passage: \u201cStudio is ready to unveil such high-profile projects as \u2018Terminator 4\u2019; one or two installments of \u2018The Hobbit,\u2019 which Sloan hopes will be directed by Jackson Jackson; and a sequel to \u2018The Thomas Crown Affair\u2019 with Pierce Brosnan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, fans have only been waiting for that announcement for nearly five years, ever since the release of The Fellowship of the Ring<\/em> (December, 2001) allayed their fears that Jackson would ruin Tolkien\u2019s classic in adapting it for the screen. Yet MGM\u2019s announcement has caused relatively little stir\u2014mainly, I suspect, because most people can\u2019t quite figure out what\u2019s really happening. Why did it take so long? Why is MGM making this announcement and not New Line, the company that produced Jackson\u2019s trilogy? Is Jackson going to direct it or not? Hasn\u2019t he already got enough on his plate with all those big projects he keeps taking on?<\/p>\n

Now, I had the cooperation of the filmmakers in writing my book, and I had the privilege of interviewing Jackson back in July of 2004, when King Kong<\/em> was still in pre-production. That doesn\u2019t mean, of course, that I\u2019m privy to any of the negotiations that are presumably now going on behind the scenes. Still, I\u2019ve been following the Hobbit<\/em> situation pretty closely, and I think I know enough about the background of all this to sort out at least part of just what the heck is going on here.<\/p>\n

Flashback to 1969. Tolkien sells the rights to LOTR and The Hobbit<\/em> to United Artists. U.A. doesn\u2019t end up making a film, so in 1976 the company sells the rights to Saul Zaentz (newly into film producing with One Flew over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest<\/em>, 1975\u2019s Best Picture Academy Award-winner). Zaentz makes the Ralph Bakshi animated version of the first half of LOTR in 1978, but it\u2019s a flop, and Zaentz doesn\u2019t follow up but just sits on the rights.<\/p>\n

In 1995, Jackson, looking to follow up The Frighteners<\/em> with a big, special-effects-heavy, thinks of LOTR. Harvey Weinstein, then head of Miramax, manages after a long negotiation to buy the LOTR and Hobbit <\/em>rights from Zaentz. In fact, the thought at the time was that Jackson would begin with The Hobbit<\/em>\u2014until it turned out that Miramax had only the production rights for it, while the distribution rights remained with UA, which had subsequently been absorbed by MGM. Negotiations over those rights weren\u2019t an option, since MGM was up for sale, and it wasn\u2019t about to dispose of any valuable assets.<\/p>\n

Jackson launched into pre-production on a two-part LOTR instead, moving to New Line in 1998 when Miramax announced they would only fund a single, two-hour version. New Line made three parts, and the rest is history. But just as LOTR fever was winding down in 2004, MGM finally was acquired by Sony. Once it settled down in its new home, MGM presumably started negotiating with New Line, which now owned the production rights for The Hobbit.<\/em> The result is that New Line and MGM will pool their rights and co-produce the film.<\/p>\n

What about Jackson? Even while finishing LOTR, he and partner Fran Walsh personally acquired the rights to bestseller The Lovely Bones<\/em> and announced it as their post-Kong<\/em> project, with Jackson directing. In late 2005 Jackson announced that he and Walsh would co-executive produce a film adaptation of the videogame \u201cHalo,\u201d to be directed by Neill Bomkamp. In early September of this year, Jackson broke the news that he would produce a World War II film, The Dam Busters<\/em>, to be directed by Christian Rivers (of LOTR storyboard and special-effects fame), and on September 12 he revealed that he had acquired the rights to Naomi Novik\u2019s \u201cTemeraire\u201d fantasy series (three books done and more on the way). To top it all off, on September 27 Jackson announced that in conjunction with Microsoft he is forming a videogames subsidiary of his production company Wingnut Films, to be called Wingnut Interactive.<\/p>\n

Whew! Could someone that busy take on The Hobbit<\/em> as well? Jackson\u2019s talking as if he could. In a long interview<\/a> posted on Ain\u2019t It Cool News September 16, he said that no one had contacted him about making the film, but he was already tossing out ideas about bringing back some of the characters from LOTR to fill out the plot. A week later, Jackson chatted with EW.com, sounding even more enthusiastic and brushing aside the idea that his current lawsuit against New Line (over DVD payments) would be a factor: \u201cI\u2019d love to make another film for New Line. And certainly The Hobbit<\/em> isn\u2019t involved in the lawsuit.\u201d He also pointed out, \u201cWe\u2019ve still kept the miniatures of Rivendell in storage, and the set of Bag End, Bilbo Baggins\u2019 house, has also been saved\u201d (\u201cAction Jackson<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n

So how could he do it? Whether with an eye to a possible Hobbit<\/em> project or not, Jackson has organized his projects in a remarkably flexible way. Halo<\/em> (to be distributed by Universal in North America and Twentieth Century Fox abroad) and The Dam Busters<\/em> (co-financed by Universal and StudioCanal) are being directed by others, and an executive producer doesn\u2019t necessarily have to do a whole lot of hands-on work. As Jackson pointed out to his EW interviewer, Steve Daly, \u201cThat\u2019s one of the reasons we\u2019re producing a number of things now rather than directing. Producing is fun and it\u2019s not as all-consuming.\u201d<\/p>\n

As to the \u201cTemeraire\u201d series, that is a long-range project that Jackson speaks of putting into pre-production when Halo<\/em> and The Lovely Bones<\/em> are substantially finished. He\u2019s not sure yet whether he\u2019ll direct the resulting film or films. The Lovely Bones<\/em> is not all that far advanced, either, with Jackson, Walsh, and co-writer Philippa Boyens having only recently finished a first draft of the script. The rights for both of these projects are owned entirely by Jackson and Walsh, with no studio yet attached\u2014which means they have no deadline. In another remark that sounds calculated to encourage MGM and New Line, in the same interview Jackson remarks, \u201cWe\u2019re not imposing any deadline on ourselves with all these projects. They\u2019ll take as long as they need to until we\u2019re happy with them.\u201d It sounds a lot like he\u2019s hinting that they could also be put off if another attractive project comes along.<\/p>\n

In a print article based on his interview (\u201cShire Circumstances,\u201d in the September 29 issue of Entertainment Weekly<\/em>), Daly remarks, \u201cMake no mistake: In the wake of MGM\u2019s unilateral announcement, Jackson has indeed started thinking about what he might do with The Hobbit<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether New Line and MGM will follow up (or maybe are doing so already) is anybody\u2019s guess right now, but Jackson\u2019s participation would obviously enhance the value of the film property immensely. (A new poll over on TheOneRing.net<\/a> shows nearly 60 percent of respondents consider it definite or likely that they would not go see The Hobbit<\/em> if Jackson is not involved in its making.) Whatever gets decided, I hope it happens before my manuscript goes to the typesetters and beyond the possibility of revisions. If so, it would be the ultimate update for the book!<\/p>\n

[For follow-up entries on the Hobbit<\/em> project, go here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s going on with the Hobbit film? Kristin here: While David is in Vancouver enjoying seeing films and meeting filmmakers, I am at home preparing to make the final changes in my latest book, The Frodo Franchise: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood (to be published by the University of California Press next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-frodo-franchise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}