Christopher Leestormcrow20 writes: Sir Christopher Lee is once again collaborating with Tim Burton in the director’s adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”. Mr. Lee will be portraying the Jabberwock. Check out the link for more casting information, as well as a small assortment of photos of the main players. More..

Alf Seegert writes: This week my board game BRIDGE TROLL is being released by Z-Man Games (it was released in Germany last week). I’m a huge Tolkien fan, as is the artist Ryan Laukat, and my hope is that the troll-theme of the game might appeal to other Tolkien-fans as well. (In the game players get to play bridge trolls who eat and extorts travelers who try to cross their bridges). It would be a huge honor if you found this fit to post on theonering.net! More..

Lord of the Rings Online, the only MMO based on the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien, is a subscription-driven online title, but it’ll soon be heading into a market filled with free-to-play games. CDC Games, which has more than 160 million users and 13 million active users in China, holds the exclusive distribution rights and expects to launch the game in China during the second half of this year. The Chinese version of Lord of the Rings Online will come with “significant changes” from the version launched in North America and Europe. CDC Games will utilize its extensive knowledge of the Chinese market and research into local customer preferences to alter the game in various ways, including an enhanced player versus player function. CDC is already encouraged by preliminary test data on the game so far, which has shown an activation rate of more than 80 percent during its closed beta test held earlier this year. Lord of the Rings Online to Rule China

mignola_lgMessage board members Earl and Theodred alerted us to a recent video interview with Mike Mignola at collider.com. In addition to saying how much he’s looking forward to Comic-Con, Mike made some brief, but very interesting comments about the week and a half he recently spent in New Zeeland working on The Hobbit, and what we can expect:

“It’s hard to say at this point, because so much work had been done before I even got there that I looked at it and I said wow, it looks like a 16 hour, insane movie, there’s so much in it. It’s too early for me to tell how much stuff is going to get pared down. I don’t really feel comfortable saying too much, except that it looks amazing. And it’s very much a del Toro stamp on that world.”

Check out the complete interview here.

fellowship-movie-posterDo you recall the thrill of watching the LOTR trailers for the first time? Did you choose the movies you went to see in the theater based on the probability that the LOTR trailers would be playing with them?  Or, did you download them and play them over and over because they were so good? Well, the folks at ifc.com agree that they were pretty special, ranking them at #35 of The 50 Greatest Trailers of all Time. Follow the link to check it out, and thanks to elf_wannabee on the message boards for bringing it to our attention.

DragonCon 2008The 2009 DragonCon schedule promises to be interesting and fun and features John Noble, a list of speakers and even TheOneRing.net. The event takes place annually, this year September 4-7, in a series of hotels in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. You can read details about the convention here and all the details of the Tolkien programming right here. TORn is scheduled to present an unauthorized look at everything we know so far about the production of ‘The Hobbit’ films and then present for discussion many of the things still open for speculation just as official pre-production begins.