TORONTO — Move over, The Lion King. Another epic adaptation is nipping at your heels — one even longer and more commercially extravagant. The Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings franchise is now moving to the stage. It opens Thursday in Toronto. In fact, when the new stage version of The Lord of the Rings opens Thursday at the Princess of Wales Theatre, it will become the most expensive theater project on record, having cost $23.2 million. But veteran producer Kevin Wallace would rather you not focus on the price tag. “I’m skeptical of people being impressed by the money,” Wallace says. “It is The Lord of the Rings, which meant that there would have to be a great deal of research and development before we even went into a rehearsal room.” [More]
Month: March 2006
Bruce Hopkins writes: I am just wanting to let you know that on my web site there is now a link to a photo gallery of absolutely stunning shots from the theatre show I was in at the recent Wellington International Arts Festival The Holy Sinner. The Holy Sinner had Cliff Curtis (Bringing Out The Dead, Three Kings, Runaway Jury, Blow) in the lead role. Also in the show were Cameron Rhodes (Farmer Maggot), and Ian Hughes who was a featured Gondorian in ROTK. LOTR’s Grant Major was the designer of the show. Cheers, and all the best for whatever is going on in your life.
By the way while in Wellington I called in for 5 minutes, as that was all the time I had before having to be at a show, to say hi to Tehanu, Vic James, Suzie Knight and a Red Carpet Tour group, who were having dinner at a nice restaurant up from the Embassy Theatre. It was wonderful to meet another group of LOTR enthusiasts. [More]
We have recently added four new fanfilms for you to enjoy! Take a look at ‘The Trouble of the Rings’, ‘Ring Fiction’, ‘Orodruin Dogs’ and ‘Natural Born Orcs’! [TORN Fanfilms]
Based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated stars Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings) as Jonathan Safran Foer, a young Jewish man who wants to learn how his grandfather escaped from the Nazi incursions into Russia. From the U.S., he hires the hip-hop loving Alex (Eugene Hutz, leader of the gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello) and his surly grandfather (Boris Leskin, Men in Black) as tour guides–only to discover, when he arrives in Odessa, that they are perhaps less than dependable. [More]
When Middle Earth comes to a stage in Toronto this week for the world premiere of a musical version of The Lord of the Rings, diehard fans of the trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien could be forgiven for feeling sceptical. It’s one thing to turn one of the most popular stories of our time into an epic film. It’s quite another to bring it to the stage as a musical – with actors on three storey-tall stilts, an Elvish chorus, a set that morphs from woods to battlements to a volcano and a Gollum who sings. [More]