Concept: Get everyone who came the first time to come back. On the marketing front, make sure people realize it’s “the central installment”; never use the word ‘sequel’.
Expectations: Giant. In one of the biggest gambles in movie history, New Line spent about $170 million making all three ‘Rings’ pictures at once. Part I was a smash; the AOL Time Warner unit wants a repeat.
The Buzz: The seasons’ big winner. Industry execs think “Two Towers” could be as huge as last year’s “Fellowship of the Ring.” Helping matters is recent video/DVD release of “Fellowship” that may pique the interest of the nine people who didn’t see the first one. “Towers” has even more fighting, the studio says, including epic battle sequences. And then there’s Gollum, the schizophrenic freak whom Frodo and Sam meet on their journey. “He’s got a good side and a bad side,” says New Line marketing chief Russell Schwarts. “I call this ‘A Beautiful Mind’ in Middle-earth.” (nice quote there Russell, blech -Xo)
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Xoanon here, a few people have written to me with the same info, check it out from Nathaniel’s email: It appears that The Two Towers is indeed finished, for it has been rated at filmratings.com. The rating is PG-13 and the reasons cited are nearly identical to that of the first film: “rated PG-13 for epic battle sequences and scary images.” (The only difference is the omission of the word ‘some’ before ‘scary.’)
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The National is having poor luck with its leading men recently. First, Paul Rhys had to pull out of Ivanov, and now Sir Ian Holm has had to withdraw from Mappa Mundi due to a medical problem. [More]
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Tomorrow at 9:00 pm EDT, TheOneRing.net will be hosting a Developers chat with Black Label Games and Surreal Software. They’ll be discussing Surreal’s The Fellowship of the Ring for PS2 and PC, and Black Label Games’ future LOTR video games. Be sure to come along and bring your questions! [More]
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Who: Black Label Games (Check out some screen shots from Black Label Games’ LOTR games here), Publishers of the video games based on the books and Surreal Software (The first seven screen shots are from their PS2 game), developers of The Fellowship of the Ring for Playstation 2 and PC. Current confirmed guests are:
Jeff Everett (Fellowship of the Ring Producer at Black Label)
Cliff Broadway (Tolkien Marketing Consultant and TheOneRing.net Staffer)
Andrew Shiozaki (Marketing Product Manager)
Members of the Surreal Development Team
More guests TBD
When: Friday, October 18th 9:00 pm EDT, 6:00 PDT.
Where: The room #Havens on TheOneRing.net’s IRC server irc.theonering.net. Instructions on how to connect can be found here. You can also chat using your browswer with java here.
How the chat works: This will be a moderated chat, so when it begins only the guests and moderators will be able to speak. If you have a question for the guests, PM (Private Message) one of the co-moderators. You send a PM by double clicking on their name or by typing /msg , where is you type their name, and where is you type the message. Nothing too complicated :). The co-moderators will gather the questions, and pass on select ones for the head moderator, that’s me, to go through, I’ll then pick the questions to ask. After the Q&A session is over, the guests will be invited to stick around, and the room will be un-moderated, so everyone will get to talk. This is your chance to chat with the guests.
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In what is believed to be the largest VHS counterfeiting bust in the United Kingdom in nearly two years, police and the U.K. video piracy watchdog, the Federation Against Copyright Theft, this week smashed a Lord of the Rings piracy factory, the agency reported Wednesday. [More]
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