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Archive for the ‘Studios’ Category

Are the studios trying to kill Blu-Ray?

AUJ-EE-blu-ray As the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in Extended Edition format approaches, Empire Magazine examines whether studios are giving the format their full support. Perhaps what’s on offer in the AUJ EE works as a counter-example against Empire’s critique? Tell us your thoughts!

Thanks to Ringer Rud the Spud for the link. (more…)

Posted in Blu-Ray, Hobbit Movie, Merchandise, MGM, New Line Cinema, Studios, The Hobbit, Warner Bros.

Is a Lord of the Rings film museum coming to Wellington?

Wellington waterfrontNothing official has been announced yet, but indications out of the Capital City are that things are progressing towards something Lord of the Rings fans have long desired, a museum dedicated to Middle-earth. For a more dynamic experience for visitors, it makes more sense for it to be a more general Film museum focused on all the films coming from Wingnut and WETA. That would allow for visitors to see new exhibits over time, but with a heavy focus on Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Te Papa had a very popular Lord of the Rings exhibit in 2002 and again in 2006, which turned out to be its most popular exhibit, so the market is there. Locations being looked at are somewhere along the waterfront. This would gives fans year round a second place to connect with their LOTR fandom alongside the WETA Cave, and something for them to see long after the final film is released. One of the biggest hurdles when this idea was first conceived was the licensing rights, but indications seem to imply that is less of an impediment right now.

For more details, read the article here.

Posted in Events, Exhibits, Fans, Hobbit Movie, Lord of the Rings, LotR Movies, Meet Ups, MGM, New Line Cinema, Peter Jackson, Studios, The Hobbit, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, Tolkien, Warner Bros., WETA Cave

Ten ways TORn serves Tolkien and Lord of the Rings fandom

TORn logoBeginning last Saturday and running through to September 4, TheOneRing.net is hosting a Pledge Drive (see the banner at the top) as well as a bunch of auctions for some really cool memorabilia and collectibles.

The day-to-day operation of the website, and the events we host, require a lot more resources than when we first started nearly 15 years ago. We sometimes find it hard to ask our readers for the help we need to keep running, so we began discussing what it is that makes TheOneRing.net worth helping out. It started out as a search for the Top Ten Moments of TORn, but the list got so long because each staff member had their own idea of important moments in TORn history. Here, instead, is something more encompassing: Ten Ways TORn helps serve Tolkien and Lord of the Rings fandom (listed in no specific order).

And, if you enjoy what we do, consider a donation (no amount too small, because every bit does help!) to keep us running!

If you can’t, that’s fine as well — keep reading, commenting and contributing. Because TORn is as much you as it is us!

If you’ve ever sent in an article, submitted a photo or report, posted on our messageboards, visited our chat, or commented on our twitter, facebook or g+, you’re the reason TheOneRing.net is among the largest and most-respected pillars of the Tolkien community on the web.

(more…)

Posted in Barliman News, Barlimans, Cannes 2001, Casting Rumors, ComicCon, Conventions, Costuming, Crew News, Director Rumors, DragonCon, Events, Fans, Fellowship of the Ring, Film Screenings, Green Books, Hall of Fire, Hobbit Book, Hobbit Cast News, Hobbit Movie, Hobbit Movie Rumors, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lectures & Education, Locations Sets, Lord of the Rings, LotR Books, LotR Cast News, LotR Movies, Make the Hobbit Happen, Meet Ups, Movie Fellowship of the Ring, Movie Return of the King, Movie The Two Towers, MrCere in New Zealand, New Zealand, Old Cannes News, Old ComicCon News, Old DragonCon News, Old Main News, Old Oscar Party News, Old Spy Reports, Original TORn, Oscar Parties, Other Events, Other Merchandise, Other Tolkien books, Peter Jackson, PJ New Line, PJ's Other Films, Production, Return of the King, Rumors Spy News, Rumours Spy News, Studios, The Hobbit, The Two Towers, Tolkien, Tolkien Reading Day, Trailer, Wellington

LA mayor declares state of emergency, blames NZ

Peter-Jackson-Doctor-Who The mayor of Los Angeles says New Zealand and other countries are taking film and television work from Hollywood, prompting him to declare a “state of emergency”.

Eric Garcetti was elected in May and says the city’s pre-eminence in the entertainment industry is under pressure from other US cities as well New Zealand, the UK, Australia and Canada. (more…)

Posted in Hobbit Movie, New Zealand, Peter Jackson, Studios, The Hobbit

Compare The Desolation of Smaug trailer: 48 fps v 24fps!

Thorin Oakenshield Over at HFRmovies.com a talented fellow named Michael Sanders has used some nifty video trickery to interpolate what the Desolation of Smaug trailer might look like at 48 frames per second. It’s a very interesting experiment.

Several TORn staff have compared the Sanders’ 48fps interpolation and the 24fps rendition initially released by Warner Bros. side-by-side — and we feel that even Sanders’ “amateur” (and that word seems unfair for something that looks so good) interpolation reduces picture blurring blurring from camera panning and fast movement. (more…)

Posted in Creations, Fans, Headlines, Hobbit Movie, Studios, The Hobbit, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Trailer, Warner Bros.

MGM reports growth thanks to ‘The Hobbit’

225px-The_Hobbit_(1937)MGM is reporting growth, thanks in part to ‘The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey.‘ The privately held studio says that revenues were up across all of its core businesses, but singled out contributions from the international release of home videos for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and the James Bond film Skyfall.

The year over year results are slightly skewed by the $55.7M it recorded from a television asset sale in 2012. With that included, net income came in at $35.9M, -16% vs the period last year, on revenues of $339M, +164%. Without the asset sale, net income would have been up $30M in Q2

[Read More]

Posted in Hobbit Movie, MGM, Studios, The Hobbit, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit: too little butter over too much bread? Part II

WIBPSOM-IMDB-scatter Mark Lee at Overthinking It follows up his Words in Books per Second of Movie analysis of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and other successful movies with some additional analysis examining IMDB ratings, plus the trend in adaptations over the decades.


In last week’s article, I started with a simple question: how do book lengths, as measures by word count, compare to their adapted movie run times, as measured by seconds? I was mostly looking for a statistical basis to express my displeasure at The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (and by extension, parts 2 and 3 of this unnecessary trilogy), but I wound up comparing the density of the Hobbit movies, as measured in Words in Book per Second of Movie (WIBPSOM), to other prominent movie adaptations of books: The Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, and the Twilight franchises.

The findings were interesting in and of themselves (TL;DR: The Hobbit Books have way smaller WIBPSOM values than the other franchises), but they begged for a larger scale analysis, both in size of dataset and scope of inquiry. To address the size of the dataset, I found all of the (English language) entries on this list of best-selling books that have theatrically-released, non-silent movie adaptations. After including multiple movie adaptations of the same movie and excluding movies where I couldn’t find any data on book length as measured by word count, I came up with a dataset of 59 movie adaptations of best selling books.

As for scope of inquiry, well, let’s get down to brass tacks: is there any relationship between the density of a book’s movie adaptation, as measured by WIBPSOM, and the quality of the movie, as measured by its IMDB rating?

In a word, the answer to this intriguing question is an emphatic “no.”

[Read More]

Posted in Fellowship of the Ring, Green Books, Hobbit Book, Hobbit Movie, Lord of the Rings, LotR Books, LotR Movies, MGM, Movie Fellowship of the Ring, Movie Return of the King, Movie The Two Towers, New Line Cinema, Return of the King, Studios, The Hobbit, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, The Two Towers, Warner Bros.

The Hobbit: too little butter over too much bread?

hobbit-lotr2-words-per-second Ringer Tajik tells us of this fascinating analysis of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and its two follow-ups by Mark Lee at Overthinking It that adds more fuel — and some hard numbers — to the gently simmering debate over the three-film decision that Jackson and the studios made in mid-2012.

The image at right, part of Lee’s analysis, is certainly food for thought. (more…)

Posted in Green Books, Hobbit Book, Hobbit Movie, LotR Movies, MGM, Movie Fellowship of the Ring, Movie Return of the King, Movie The Two Towers, Peter Jackson, Studios, The Hobbit, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, Warner Bros.

The literary legacy that members of the Tolkien Estate want to protect

JRR TolkienTORn friend,  Brian Tither, who has studied Old and Middle English and Old Icelandic at Victoria University NZ, has sent this response to our post on Making Sense of the latest Tolkien Lawsuit.

(more…)

Posted in Christopher Tolkien, Fans, Green Books, Headlines, Hobbit Book, Hobbit Movie, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, LotR Books, LotR Movies, New Line Cinema, Other Tolkien books, Studios, The Hobbit, Tolkien, Tolkien Estate, Tolkien Family, Warner Bros.

An in-depth first look at the AUJ EE contents

HobbitEE Ringer Alan lets us know that MovieStop, a movie store in Atlanta, Georgia, has this fantastic in-depth look at what we fans can expect from the Extended Editions of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Let’s dive right in and look at the goodies that are going to be on the discs. (more…)

Posted in Collectibles, Collectibles, DVD/Blu-Ray, DVDs, Hobbit Movie, Merchandise, Shop, Studios, The Hobbit, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Warner Bros., Weta Collectibles, WETA Workshop

Pre-order The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Extended Edition Gift Set and More!

HobbitEELate last night Amazon.com added a price and the option to pre-order the The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Gift Set. This gift set comes with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in 3D Blu-Ray, 2D, appendicies disc, and like The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Gift Sets, a special statue. This statue captures ‘The Riddles in the Dark’ sequence of the film featuring Gollum coming over a rock while Bilbo stands a bit scared of what is going on around him. The statue has been created by the amazing folks at Weta Workshop and was sculpted by Gary Hunt.You can get this set from Amazon for only $69.99 which is a great deal considering the regular 5-disc set is $38.99. [Gift Set] [Blu-Ray 3D + Blu-Ray + Ultraviolet] [Blu-Ray + Ultraviolet]

(more…)

Posted in Collectibles, Collectibles, DVD/Blu-Ray, DVDs, Hobbit Movie, Merchandise, Shop, Studios, The Hobbit, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Warner Bros., Weta Collectibles, WETA Workshop

Why Tauriel?

Tauriel In this thought piece, our newest feature writer Noah Smith outlines some of his hopes and concerns regarding the character Tauriel, and how in her best moments he hopes she’ll prove a tribute to some of most Tolkien’s vibrant heroines.


NO two Tolkien fans are the same. Yes, we harbor a deep and abiding love for all things Middle-earth, but (I like to believe) our tastes differ, even if only in the minutia. Some may enjoy the philological phantasmagoria that permeates Tolkien’s works, while others draw inspiration from the detailed locations and their histories. Personally, I have a thing for maps. However with the recent addition of Tauriel to the Middle-earth mythos, my thoughts have been drawn to the characters that inhabit our collective imagination and, more specifically, those of the female gender.

Tolkien, unlike many other fantasy writers of the twentieth century, was entirely willing to create strong, vividly imagined female characters. One that immediately comes to mind is Lúthien Tinúviel, who was so prominent in Tolkien’s world that she is not only mentioned in The Lord of the Rings, but is also a major character in The Silmarillion and even features in the epic poem The Lay of Leithian.

Luthien Tinuviel by Alan Lee. The latter work, which Tolkien never completed, chronicles the love between Beren and Lúthien. Another well-known character from the Legendarium is Elwing the White*, mother of Elrond and Elros. How prominent was she? After several unsuccessful attempts by Eärendil the Mariner to try and sail to Valinor, Middle-earth’s most-renowned seaman was only successful after Elwing joined him on Vingilot.

The two most well-known heroines, thanks in no part to the films, are of course Arwen and Éowyn. Yes, Arwen’s romance with Aragorn did seem a tad campy on the big screen (in a beautiful, melancholic fashion that truly added to the story), but let’s not forget: this is the same elf who faced down the Nine (even if it didn’t happen in the books) and single-handedly saved Frodo from certain death. And Éowyn’s fantastic line, “I am no man!” when taunted by the Witch-king? It still raises the hairs on the back of my neck. So good. Also, I would be remiss to neglect Galadriel, of Lothlórien. Not only is she a Ring-bearer of immense power, but she also sits upon the predominantly male (even if the Mair aren’t technically Men) White Council.

So, where does this leave us? Ah, yes: Tauriel. As a Tolkien fan, I’m ecstatic to see a fresh addition to the lore. As someone who considers himself to be rather versed in the ways of the entertainment industry, I see it as a shameless attempt to attract the ever-elusive demographic of young women (insert Orlando Bloom joke here) and adolescent males (insert scantily clad bikini picture here). Honestly? If she’s anything more than a Disney princess in elf ears, I’ll be satisfied.

What I’m trying to say, in a less cynical fashion, is that I trust Peter and Fran, I really do. But I’m also aware of the climate in which they have to operate. Big money means a big emphasis on making a big profit, and a necessary part of show business is trying to target as many demographics as possible. Time and time again, we see corporations put pressure on directors and writers to change their movies in ways that reach a larger audience, but harm the overarching narrative.

Leggy Tauriel Will Evangeline Lilly be fantastic? I’m sure she will. Will her and Orlando’s on-screen chemistry, and indeed their very presence, contribute to the overall narrative of the trilogy? I’m sure they’ll make it work. Is it necessary? I remain to be convinced, largely because I’ve seen how sterile and bureaucratic the industry can be.

In the best of all possible worlds, I see Tauriel as the embodiment of the inner strength and outward beauty of all the aforementioned characters. Why Tauriel? Because The Lord of Rings trilogy had its strong female protagonists, as did the Silmarillion and the Legendarium before it. Therefore, in the spirit of a more diverse, modern telling of The Hobbit, I see it as only natural that Jackson and company would want to introduce a fresh female character. In truth, the only part of me that is uneasy is the fervently cynical, text-obsessed fanboy who’s shaking the bars of his cage and muttering, “but she’s not in the book!”

Until more elements of the plot are revealed, Tauriel remains a positive yet potentially unnecessary addition to Peter Jackson’s cinematic vision. In the end it all boils down to the spirit in which these changes are made to the source material. Who knows? I could be completely off the mark. When it comes to the Hobbit films I’ve yet to be disappointed.

In Jackson we trust.

* Bootnote. Most would automatically think of Aredhel with the appellation “the White”. However, there is one single reference that seems to indicate that the label also applied to Elwing. It’s from The Fellowship of the Ring where Aragorn is speaking to the four hobbits of Beren and Lúthien. As it’s direct speech, it does seem to be part of an oral tradition of either the Dunedain, or of the Noldor (or both). The quote in full: “For of Beren and Lúthien was born Dior Thingol’s heir; and of him Elwing the White whom Eärendil wedded, he that sailed his ship out of the mists of the world into the seas of heaven with the Silmaril upon his brow. And of Eärendil came the Kings of Númenor, that is Westernesse.” A Knife in the Dark, The Fellowship of the Ring.

Noah Smith is a freelance writer operating out of the woods of Pennsylvania, though he leaves often and for great lengths of time. The proud owner of more pet projects than any sane person deserves, he peddles his craft in various portions of the internet and local collegiate magazines, writing poetry, commentary, speculative fiction and erroneous remarks in the comment sections of videos. He writes on a blog called Utumbria and can also be found on Twitter. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of TheOneRing.net or its staff.

Posted in Characters, Director news, Evangeline Lilly, Green Books, Hobbit Book, Hobbit Movie, New Line Cinema, Peter Jackson, Studios, The Hobbit, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Warner Bros.