Last month, TheOneRing.net and Warner Brothers teamed up to celebrate the release of The Lord Of The Rings Motion Picture Trilogy on Blu Ray with a special giveaway. We’ve finally gotten around to announcing the winners (yay!):
Congratulations to message board member jmmorehouse who wins the Grand Prize of a Lord of the Rings Middle-earth Treasure Chest Jewelry Box.
Other winners of smaller prizes will be contacted via the message boards. We’d like to thank all those who participate and apologize in our delay of posting the winners!
Ringer spy Earl provided a story hot of the presses from the Los Angeles Times that says MGM’s management is no longer in control of the studio’s fate and that debtholders are now the decision makers.
The MGM Saga is developing into a film-worthy drama all its own (one that will never get a greenlight) and the article states: “The internal divide and lingering uncertainty demonstrate how tortured MGM’s reorganization process has been and how the balance of power has shifted from management to lenders.”
For fans this means that non-entertainment types are now calling the shots and how that plays out is completely unpredictable. There is one tidbit about the two movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” to be directed by Guillermo del Toro and produced by Peter Jackson:
“Though Time Warner’s bid has not been officially rejected, people at the media giant’s Warner Bros. studio have been frustrated by the protracted process, in part because it and MGM co-own the rights to movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” which are currently in development.”
The article explains a lot more of the intricacies of what is going on. How does this fit with the report that filming will start in November? We have our feelers out and will update you as soon as we hear anything definite.
Anthony B. Robinson writes: In response to my recent piece on Australia, Crosscut readers quite correctly pointed out the role of natural resources and their extraction in the strength of the Australian economy. That is a major factor that I didn’t note. Coal mining for the Chinese market is huge. Still, the more conservative bent of banking here (and in Canada) has been a hedge against inflation. And the more robust public sector has balanced excessive recourse to privatization.
Now I’m in my second week in small New Zealand, which affords opportunities for some comparison to its huge neighbor, Australia. In some respects, New Zealand is to Australia as Canada is to the United States. Australia, like the U.S., has the larger population and the dominant economy, tending to overshadow its neighbor culturally as well as economically. More..
Linuxelf sends along a few more videos from the LOTR golden days. Take a look at the ROTK Golden Globe wins, a party at 3Foot6 and Wellington’s famous Cuba Street.
LA Weekly columnist Nikki Finke seems to have some new information that even the Eagles, ahem, the rest of the inerweb hasn’t caught wind of yet. Reporting over at Deadline.com on Peter Jackson’s plans for the new King Kong 360 3D attraction at the Universal Studios Hollywood studio tour, she digresses to update fans on a few things “Hobbit”, all of which seem to indicate that serious matters are ongoing even as we wait and watch and speculate.
On The Hobbit front, I’m told that both scripts are in, that discussions are underway right now to determine if they’ll shoot in 3D. (I think it’s inevitable). They will set everything in place in a New Zealand powwow next month, and then casting will begin for a November start.
There seems to be no indication that the uncertainty surrounding MGM’s situation is impeding the progress on these films in any way (yet), but as reported recently by the Wall Street Journal and by our friend and messageboard member Kristin Thompson over at her blog The Frodo Franchise, MGM’s creditors do indeed seem to be close to a plan to resolve the studio’s financial woes.
While it isn’t exactly “news” it will be of a lot of interest to those who haven’t seen the 2011 version of the annual Tolkien calendar that Cor Blok is next year’s artist.
Blok is the only Tolkien artist living who met J.R.R. Tolkien in person and the English professor bought two paintings from the Dutch professor (history of art) and was given a third as a gift. Blok’s work, produced 50 years ago, is a definite departure from the more familiar works many fans are used to. He reportedly produced over 100 illustrations. You can pre-order it here and you can read a recent interview with Blok here. It is scheduled to be available in July.
Last month, TheOneRing.net and Warner Brothers teamed up to celebrate the release of The Lord Of The Rings Motion Picture Trilogy on Blu Ray with a special giveaway. We’ve finally gotten around to announcing the winners (yay!):
