I work part-time as a bookseller at Waldenbooks, a division of Borders International. Anyway, today I was intrigued to find a large white envelope lying upon my manager’s desk with a bright orange sticker with white lettering on the front proclaiming’Lord of the Rings material inside.” The return address read as follows:

Marketing Dept.
Houghton Mifflin
222 Berkeley St.
Boston, MA 02116

Needless to say (me being a Tolkien fanatic like the rest of you) my curiosity was piqued. The package was already opened so I had no moral qualms about reaching inside and taking a gander at whatever treasure it might hold. I drew forth some curious items:

1. A ‘Teacher’s Aid’ for helping to teach Lord of the Rings to students.
2. Something called a ‘shelf talker’ with a whole bunch of movie art and photos that’s meant to be put up in the fantasy section.

I also found this EXTREMELY interesting letter which I photocopied and am now reproducing exactly…

Houghton Mifflin HOT TITLE ALERT

THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien

Now a movie from New Line Cinema!

Dear Bookseller:

J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic adventure THE LORD OF THE RINGS is coming to a theater near you! The movie, directed by Peter Jackson, releases next year, but the trailer…

…is in the theaters December 8th

Tolkien sales spiked last spring after 10 million people downloaded the film teaser released on-line.

Please place the enclosed shelf talker in your fantasy section immediately!

We’ve included the ISBNs of our best-selling Tolkien backlist to help you order up today; and please let us know if you’d like more Teacher’s Guides.

Are you ready for the movie of the year?!
Shelf Talker
Full-color, featuring movie art, ‘¹/₂‘ (ISBN: 0-618-13857-9 /NC)

For a complete, annotated listing of our best-selling Tolkien-titles, please visit our web-site: www.lordoftheringstrilogy.com

For the latest movie news, please visit:

www.lordoftherings.net

To order, please contact your Houghton Mifflin sales rep or call / fax customer service at (800) 225-3362, Fax (800)634-7568

————

That was the whole letter, and boy was I surprised when I read that whole December 8th part! The only New Line film I know of being released that day is the Dungeons and Dragons films.

What happened to ’13 Days?’

Well, I quickly grabbed that letter, photocopied it, and retyped it. Now I pass it on to you all for judgment…

-Leonides

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Ringer Spy Sparrowhawk sends in word on an article that appeared in the Altavista Entertainment website. The article goes into detail regarding New Line Cinema’s ups and downs this year regarding box office success.

They spoke with Michael Lynne, one of the head honchos at New Line, concering LOTR, Lynne said:

On “Lord of the Rings,” Lynne says “we have close to $180 million in international guarantees,” plus merchandising advances and tax-incentive deals in New Zealand and elsewhere that limits New Line’s financial exposure on production “to not more than $20 million a picture.”

Read the entire article here. [More]

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Ringer Spy Simon sends in news on a swedish group that has just released a Tolkien Inspired CD. [More]

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John Forde, the LOTR reporter for E!Online, wrote in to apologise for the mistaken caption on one of the photos in the latest report, which identifies Sean Astin as Frodo. Not his fault, apparently. The layout artist vagued out….He says the error will be corrected as soon as poss.

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From DarkHorizons

New Line’s Release Slate: There’s been a shake up of release dates for New Line’s upcoming film schedule. Kevin Costner’s “Thirteen Days” has been pushed back to a more appropriate December 25th limited/January 12th wide release. “Sugar and Spice” has been put back two weeks to February 9th, “Blow” has been moved up to March 30th, “Rush Hour” has been moved back to August 3rd, and “Lord of the Rings” has set a definitive date of December 19th. Other releases like “Happy Campers”, “Highway”, “John Q”, “Simone” and “Knockaround Guys” have all been declared ‘To Be Announced’. Thanks to ‘W’.

This will mean, of course, that the LOTR Trailer will most likely be pushed back with ‘Thirteen Days’ as well…sigh..

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Ringer Spy WaiSpy sends along some great pics from the Minas Tirith set. [More]

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