Video gamers chipped in for a good cause on Wednesday night by bidding on an Xbox and a copy of Halo 2 autographed by Peter Jackson. The winning bid took home the console and game for $1500, with total proceeds from the celebrity auction at Auckland Town Hall reaching $190,000. The auction was to raise money for the Raukatauri Music Therapy Trust, which operates a music therapy centre in the Auckland suburb of Newton. The centre opened in 2003 and caters for special-needs children of school age and younger. [More]
Month: November 2005
New Zealand film director Peter Jackson, of Wellington, has bought rights to one of China’s best-selling novels of recent years, Wolf Totem, a tale of rugged life among wolves on the Mongolian plains. Jackson, best known for his trilogy of dark fantasies in The Lord of the Rings and his version of King Kong – to be released next month – has bought the story rights to the novel and plans to produce a film based on it, the New York Times reports. The story tells how a young Han Chinese man and his friends steal a young wolf from its pit and raise it in their tent. Written by a 59-year-old political scientist at a Beijing university – who uses the pen name Jiang Rong – Wolf Totem has been acclaimed internationally as a stirring allegorical critique of Chinese civilisation, which he calls soft and lacking in individuality and freedom. [More]
November 2, 2005 – It sounds like the Halo movie could start shooting in as few as six months. According to a report on the Scoop Independant News website, the film adaptation of Microsoft/Bungie’s hit videogame series will begin filming in May with a mid-2007 release date planned. This is the first news we’ve heard of a production timeline for highly-anticipated flick. This bit of news was apparently included in an official press release promoting a charity auction featuring an Xbox and Halo 2 game autographed by newly-signed Halo movie producer Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings, King Kong). [More]
Time Warner subsidiary New Line Cinema is being sued over the Lord of the Rings trilogy. An investment syndicate, including the BNZ, has filed three related actions at the High Court in Auckland. They allege breach of contract in a case linked to the financing of the Peter Jackson project, claiming they did not receive all the money they were entitled to. Time Warner in the US says it plans to vigorously defend the lawsuits. [More]
Everyone is reminded that Alan Lee, the acclaimed LOTR illustrator and Academy Award-winning conceptual designer for the film trilogy, will join us in the Hall of Fire (on the TORn IRC server) on Saturday November 5 at 6pm EST for a live question and answer session. If you’re wondering about pesky items such as time zone conversions and how to get onto IRC, this post has the answers for you! [More]
Everyone is reminded that Alan Lee, the acclaimed LOTR illustrator and Academy Award-winning conceptual designer for the film trilogy, will join us in the Hall of Fire (on the TORn IRC server) on Saturday November 5 at 6pm EST for a live question and answer session. If you’re wondering about pesky items such as time zone conversions and how to get onto IRC, this post has the answers for you! [More]