lotrprintargonathalrg2Our friends at Weta Workshop have released their latest newsletter and its jam packed with information. Tonight, we get two new pre-orders and a run down of when we will start seeing items for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The first item that came up for pre-order is the next Hobbit Hole helping fans create their own Hobbiton with Gandalf’s Cutting. This great little piece is named for being the Hobbit Hole that is nearest when Gandalf enters Hobbiton. The other item that went up for pre-order is a beatuiful art print capturing The Argonath. This stunning print was created by Gust Hunter and captures the Kings of Old as the Fellowship goes by. You can order Gandalf’s Cutting for $40 and it will ship in late November and you can also order The Argonath art print for $35 which is in-stock.

Also within tonights newsletter, Weta tells fans when they can expect to start ordering products that are tied in with the second film in the Hobbit Trilogy. These products will start to be released from next Monday afternoon here in the US, which is next Tuesday morning in New Zealand/Australia.  So starting from next week fans can expect to order at least one new statue, which will be the Elven King Thranduil himself.

Here is the full comment from tonight’s newsletter:

Next week signals the launch of the first items from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

We have previously launched Bilbo and Bombur Barrel Riders as exclusive preview products, but 15 October signals the start of our range proper!

We have a range of products lined up for the next few months and while we want to keep some of them a surprise, one or two have seen the light of day at conventions and events.

King Thranduil 1/6 scale statue is one such piece and we will start taking orders for this striking Limited Edition piece:

Tuesday 15 October at 9AM NZ time!

Around the World that means the following times:

  • US West Coast: Monday 14 October at 1pm

  • US East Coast: Monday 14 October at 4pm

  • Central Europe: Monday 14 October at 10pm

  • Sydney, Australia: Tuesday 15 October at 7am

NYCC - New York Comic-ConGreetings from the Big Apple!  TheOneRing.net staffers are gathering to get set up and ready for New York ComicCon, which starts tomorrow and runs until Sunday 13th. We’ll be at booth 3008 – that’s a corner booth really near the entrance to 3A on the show floor.  Come and see us!  Here’s some of the awesome stuff we’ll have at the booth:

Continue reading “New York ComicCon starts tomorrow!”

desolation of smaug poster It’s the last quarter of the year, but there are still a bunch of movies in the SF-fantasy genres to make their debut, including Thor: the Dark World, Carrie, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Ender’s Game and, of course, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

The folks over on SF-Fantasy.com are running a reader poll to discover the most-anticipated SF-fantasy movie coming out in the remainder of 2013 (Gravity is in there oddly, but lets pretend or something). Seems as though the Stephen King fans are putting some heavy backing in for Carrie so far — time to put Desolation of Smaug tops, surely? Continue reading “Poll: what 2013 movie are you most looking forward to?”

Benedict-Cumberbatch.jpg 446×251 pixels We hear that Benedict “Smaugtastic” Cumberbatch will be participating in an “ask me anything” session on Reddit on Friday Oct 11 at 2:30pm EDT.

What time is that in your particular time zone? Visit this handy little Event Announcer time conversion table that we’ve created for you over on Time and Date. That should out when you need to set your alarm.

Where precisely? You’ll want to head to http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/. Continue reading “Benedict Cumberbatch ‘ask me anything’ on Reddit on October 11”

Last Tuesday, Peter Jackson and Warner Bros. finally released the second official trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

If you need to refresh your memory … who are we kidding? … you’ve memorised it all! But if you’d like to see it again, check it out on Youtube or on TheHobbit.com.

In the intervening time, staff here at TheOneRing.net have watched the trailer again and again… and again… We’ve also been poring over large screencaps, with a magnifying glass, to spot any tiny details which just might give us some further insight into what we will see when the movie is finally released in cinemas in a little more than 60 days’ time.

Check out what we spotted below! You can click on the small thumbnail screencaps to see large, high-resolution versions. A warning for spoilers!. But you’re expecting them if you made it this far, surely? Continue reading “TORn’s official frame-by-frame analysis of trailer two for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug!”

If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.

bg_wxFiK Over at Forbes.com, Scott Mendelson analyses the cost of The Hobbit movie trilogy, and why he believes that even at a cost of $561 million USD (with some post-production and marketing expenses still to come), it’s a bargain for the studios.


Imagine you’re a studio executive and you had the opportunity to spend $200 million a pop on three films in a trilogy that was all-but-guaranteed to earn $800-$1 billion at the worldwide box office per-installment.

You’d probably agree in a heartbeat and plan how to spend your bonus. So when you read about the “shocking” news [Demosthenes: I didn’t think the news was that shocking, frankly] from Variety that Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy has thus far cost $561 million, don’t be too alarmed. All-told, it’s actually a pretty smart investment. Continue reading “Why The Hobbit movie trilogy is a bargain”