Tuesday 8 September 2009

THE HOBBIT movie gets the all-clear

Following the news that the Tolkien Trust (representing the Tolkien estate) were suing New Line over failure to pay royalties on The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and also threatening to derail the movie version of The Hobbit, it was announced today that the Tolkien family and New Line have settled out-of-court. The Tolkien estate are happy with the financial settlement, and New Line and their partners MGM can continue their work on the new films, which are currently in pre-production in New Zealand with director Guillermo del Toro, with filming anticipated to start in the New Year.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's too bad that Guille Del Douchebag is a terrible director.

Phillip H. Tang said...

Not happy about this. The book was perfect as it is; don't ruin it.

Anonymous said...

@ Phillip: The book can't be ruined. As everyone knows, the book is always superior. For examples, I offer Dune and LOTR, even though Peter Jackson did as well as Hollywood could be expected to with such an hallowed tome.

Jeff said...

Personally I am not a big fan of del Toro. I find his movies are really slow paced and don't interest me that much.

I wish Jackson was directing these movies but he doesn't seem to want to direct anything at the moment. I just hope del Toro's "artistic" side doesn't conflict with Tolkien's world. I don't want to see any orcs walking around with eyeballs in their palms.

With all that said I can't wait for the movie ;). I'm sure it will be better than most of the garbage out there.

Also, it will be interesting to see how they do the Shire. i.e. will they go back to the same location they filmed in the trilogy and just set everything back up the same or will they go elsewhere and go for a new look? Same with other stuff - will there be continuity between the orc armour and elf armour and that sort of thing?

Mike said...

@Phillip
Are they going to burn all copies of existing books and republish them with a new sucky version? Otherwise I don't see how a movie can ruin a book. They're separate works. A movie can be bad or poorly portray a book, but that doesn't magically ruin the original book.

Anonymous said...

I for one can't abide the decision to split the book into 2 movies. Ridiculous. Otherwise I think del Toro was a good choice to direct. The Labrinth was an excellent movie.

Adam Whitehead said...

"I wish Jackson was directing these movies but he doesn't seem to want to direct anything at the moment."

THE LOVELY BONES comes out in December and he's in pre-production on the second TINTIN movie right now. He's taken a back seat since KING KONG and produced a lot of stuff (like the first TINTIN film and DISTRICT 9), but he now seems to be getting back into gear again.

"Also, it will be interesting to see how they do the Shire. i.e. will they go back to the same location they filmed in the trilogy and just set everything back up the same or will they go elsewhere and go for a new look? Same with other stuff - will there be continuity between the orc armour and elf armour and that sort of thing?"

Yes. They went back and rebuilt/replanted the Shire location a few months ago so nature would have time to 'grow in' again, as they did with the original trilogy. Weapons, armour and costumes will have visual continuity between the trilogy and the new movies, but some things will be changed. The wargs of the Misty Mountains are going to be different to the wargs of Isengard (Del Toro wasn't keen on the hyena-like appearance of the latter) apparently.

Greyweather said...

Guillermo del Toro is a wildcard for me. On the one hand, we have stuff like Pan's Labyrinth which is a very impressive piece of cinema.

On the other hand, we have stuff like Hellboy 2, which was pure Hollywood cliche IMHO.

I am adopting a wait-and-see attitude so far as The Hobbit goes.

Sturmia said...

I agree with DelToro on the hyena like wargs, they really didnt work for me. Wargs are wolves, period. :)
Besides hyenas are more closely related to cats than to dogs, but I know that doesn't really hold sway in this argument. LOL
Good to hear The Hobbit is back on track though. I am still curious.

Zach Murphy said...

I hope this turns out good, The Hobbit is my favorite book of all time.

Brett said...

I actually like a lot of Del Toro's work, although I still question the decision to split "The Hobbit" into two movies. It's not like it was a particularly long book - it seems more like they're trying to milk it to the max.

I'm curious as to how it will differ from Jackson's trilogy. Jackson did the first movie very well, but they sort of dropped off a bit in quality as time went on.