Board member Beren had the good fortune to interview Tolkien illustrator Alan Lee recently at the Paris Book Fair where Lee was invited by the French Tolkien publishing company, Christian Bourgois Editeurs, to sign the French translation of “The Children of Hurin.” In the in-depth interview, Lee describes the joys and challenges of illustrating Tolkien’s world, and comments that it would be nice to be involved with The Hobbit. [Read More]
Month: March 2008
Toby Emmerich has been named President & COO, New Line Cinema and will lead its reorganization to become a stand-alone production entity as part of Warner Bros. Entertainment, it was announced today by Barry Meyer, Chairman & CEO, and Alan Horn, President & COO, Warner Bros.
“Toby has played a major part in New Line’s success over the last decade and helped define the company’s taste and style in movies,” said Horn. “Quite simply, he’s a great film executive. He’s highly respected, and he has solid relationships across the industry. Toby and New Line are both great additions to our Studio.”
Emmerich joined the company in 1992 as a dual development and music executive and most recently served as President of Production for New Line Cinema. Read More
(CNN) — Author Arthur C. Clarke, whose science fiction and non-fiction works ranged from the script for “2001: A Space Odyssey” to an early proposal for communications satellites, has died at age 90, associates have said. Clarke had been wheelchair-bound for several years with complications stemming from a youthful bout with polio and had suffered from back trouble recently, said Scott Chase, the secretary of the nonprofit Arthur C. Clarke Foundation. He died early Wednesday — Tuesday afternoon ET — at a hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since the 1950s, Chase said. “He had been taken to hospital in what we had hoped was one of the slings and arrows of being 90, but in this case it was his final visit,” he said. Arthur C. Clarke 1917 – 2008
A 1937 first edition of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit has been sold at auction to an anonymous bidder for £60,000 – twice what it was expected to reach. The Hobbit was Tolkien’s most successful book, establishing his name as an author, and came before the longer Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Maps, photographs and manuscripts will also be sold at Bonhams in London. The copy of The Hobbit is inscribed to Tolkien’s friend Elaine Griffiths, who had originally helped get it published. Tolkien’s Hobbit fetches £60,000
TheOneRing.net reported here at the end of January that Guillermo del Toro was 99 percent sure to direct “The Hobbit”. Since then the Tolkien Estate filed a lawsuit against New Line Cinema (a copy of which can be found here) and the movie studio has been folded up and put in the pocket of its owner Warner Bros. and its bigger parent Time Warner Inc.
After all the speculation and angst, the director of two “Hellboy” films (the second set for a July 11 release) still seems to be the top choice for director and despite the legal uncertainty, the quiet movements by the key players seem to suggest the film will still be made and sooner rather than later. So in this season of waiting, TORn was finally able to contact the fan-friendly director.
Continue reading “Guillermo del Toro reaches out to TORn”
British writer and comedian Stephen Fry is back at work on a third draft of his screenplay for Peter Jackson’s remake of The Dambusters after being delayed by the United States writers’ strike. Fry also had interviewed squadron members of the famous raid and production staff had visited locations in Britain and Germany where the World War 2 events took place. Jackson is producing the remake of the classic war movie, to be directed by special effects expert Christian Rivers, and has commissioned Fry to write the script. Fry revealed details of his scriptwriting on his internet blog and podcast. He said he spent time last year “zooming around England meeting old survivors of the original raid and people connected with survivors” as research for a second draft of the script. Fry resumes work on Dambusters screenplay