SAN DIEGO – Warner Bros. today announced what has been suspected and rumored: the studio is bringing “The Hobbit,” to the San Diego Comic-Con in a big way. Most surprising is just how big as director Peter Jackson, producer and co-screenwriter Philippa Boyens, actor and director Andy Serkis along with featured actors Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen and Richard Armitage are all expected at the Saturday, July 14 Comic-Con panel hosted by Warner Bros. The film sharing the three-hour slot with “The Hobbit,” is none other than “Hobbit” co-writer Guillermo del Toro‘s “Pacific Rim.” The director is also expected to be in attendance. TheOneRing.net’s team of 13 staffers (a lucky 13 that works nicely with the source material) will be reporting from the scene as much as possible, bringing the emotions, news, photos, video and quotes to the online audience.

The studio has been relatively quiet on the publicity front considering the budget and cultural size of the two films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” (celebrating its 75th anniversary in print this year) releasing a single trailer, a series of character photos and letting Peter Jackson’s own production diaries on his Facebook page function as pre-film publicity. That seems to be changing in a single moment as WB drops an atomic bomb of Middle-earth star power at the central event of the popular-culture calendar. Continue reading “‘Hobbit’ lineup announced for Comic-Con includes Jackson, McKellen, Serkis, Armitage, Freeman, Boyens”

The biggest question received about the TORn Hobbit Premiere tour has been whether or not people living down in New Zealand, or already traveling through the region, can attend the Red Carpet/TORn premiere party. The answer is yes, but the tickets are not on sale just yet. Everyone thought it best to wait until after the madness and mayhem of comic con was over before returning our minds to Middle-earth er, New Zealand. Once Red Carpet Tours has their Party ticket registration form live and online, we will post that link. For everyone else who isn’t a local resident or already traveling through the region, feel free to conside Red Carpet Tour’s full tour, or our little Middle-earth week long getaway. Follow the link for Tour Details.

Peter Jackson doubts he could make a film in 48 hours — especially ones as accomplished as those produced by film-makers in the V48Hours film competition.

“Every year there are great movies. You see people who are being incredibly inventive and I think, ‘there is no way I could make that in 48 hours’.”

“I’m full of admiration,” he says.

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Shannon O’Toole is a life-long Lord of the Rings fan. In this blogpost on the San Diego Comic-Con Unoffocial Blog, she details why fellow-fans should be excited for this year’s edition.

As the release of The Hobbit approaches and Middle-earth once again lights up movie screens across the globe, The Lord of the Rings, the film trilogy that introduced many to Tolkien’s world for the first time, has received a revitalization of sorts.

TORn’s panel (10:15 on Thursday in room 6DE, folks) even gets a mention!

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Today, San Diego Comic con began to roll out their full programming schedule. It starts with Preview Night and screenings of numerous Pilots for the Fall TV season (this reporter has seen Arrow and I highly recommend it), followed by the full schedule for Thursday, including TORn’s 10:15am panel in Room 6DE (one of the Top 5 rooms at comiccon and a well earned upgrade for us). The next 3 days will see the rest of the schedule fall into place, and then you can expect updates and changes right up until the convention starts, and sometimes even during the convention.

TheOneRing.net will have a large slate of staffers in attendance, 13 in all, a Baker’s Dozen to be sure. Odd how that mirrors the number of Dwarves on this Unexpected Journey, now isn’t it? This is the largest we have ever had, if memory serves correctly. There will be live tweets, facebook posts and streaming content as often as possible from numerous locations on the exhibit hall floor and from numerous panels throughout the weekend. With 13 people running around, if something cool happens somewhere in SDCC, you will be the first to know. And remember, we are also going to be in not one, but two locations on the Exhibit Hall floor. We will be with are dear friends at Badali Jewelry at booth #530/532 and with our commrades from WETA a booth #3513B (inside the Gentle Giant booth). Oh, and one last note, we are hosting a little Tolkien Cosplay after our panel, about 11:30am-11:45am outside on the Terrace behind the Sails Pavillion on Thursday. Bring your costumes, bring you smiles and bring your cameras.

Let the mayhem begin. Although, why not start with the Convention Rules page before digging into the actual schedule Here!

A week or so ago, we reported that Dean O’Gorman was about to debut a an exhibition of his artwork and photography in Wellington at the PageBlackie Gallery.

Now PageBlackie has uploaded a small sample. They really are beautiful pieces of art, and well worth a look. You’ll also probably note the resemblance of some pieces to certain actors from The Hobbit.

O’Gorman dressed and set up the shots himself… [roping] in friends to play the soldiers, and fellow cast members from The Hobbit. (One features British actor Adam Brown who plays the dwarf Ori, and another has Luke Evans, who plays Bard the Bowman).

O’Gorman, who fell in love with photography at school, was a big fan of Vietnam War photographers including Larry Burrows and Don McCullin, as well as other war photographers such as the legendary Robert Capa.

“They were beautiful images and I loved how they made me feel. I loved the rawness and the humanness that was captured. I thought wouldn’t it be cool to try and stage something that could allow you to potentially feel something similar, but wasn’t actually real?

“I’m not trying to trick anybody, but I’m just trying to play with the idea of how do you feel about something that is not real but is made to seem real?. Movies do it all the time, but a lot of times in photography I find it’s approached with quite an obvious parody, or quite an obvious irony, and I wanted to try to be a bit more sincere.”

Thanks to Ringer Dragonslayer731 for the heads-up.

[Gallery] | [Stuff.co.nz feature]