sdcc-logoIt is now just a little over 2 weeks from the start of San Diego Comic Con International, the biggest and most talked about Scifi/Fantasy convention on the geek calendar. We at TheOneRing.net have been busily planning for an epic week of Hobbity goodness to share with all of you, attendee and stay-at-home fans alike. This is your handy dandy little guide to when and where you can find us throughout the convention.

This year we will only be at one location on the Exhibit Hall floor, sharing space at the WETA booth #3613. We won’t have a huge amount of room in this booth, but then that is because WETA is pulling out all the stops for the final Hobbit film and ‘Bringing It’. You will want to make Booth #3613 a ‘must see’ location, even your non-Tolkien fan friends will want to visit WETA. So stop by the booth, say hello to TORn and WETA folks alike, buy some stuff, have your camera ready and enjoy the geekiness of all things Hobbit.

The full SDCC panel schedule will officially be announced beginning this Thursday, but here is advance notice of when our panel will take place.

An Unofficial look at the final Middle-Earth Film “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” Thursday, 7/24/14, 5:00p.m. – 6:00p.m., Room: Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton Bayfront

The Hilton Bayfront is next to the Convention Center down near Hall H, and the Indigo Ballroom is probably the biggest room we have yet had at SDCC, so don’t be late and risk missing our sneak peek at the final film in the series.

Edited to Add 7/8/14:  Warner Bros. has announced their slate of films for SDCC and The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies will be among them. Their panel will be at 10am on Saturday, July 26 in Hall H. Peter Jackson was confirmed to be attending, and will be joined by Director George Miller with Mad Max Fury Road. Also mentioned was Jupiter Ascending and there will be a sneak peek screening of Richard Armitage’s Into the Storm on Wednesday, July 23 at 10pm at the Reading Gaslamp Theater, but no word yet on how to snag tickets for that. 

Throughout the weekend TORn staffers will be tweeting, posting pics and videos to Facebook, posting stories here, live streaming, and giving you as much Hobbit news as we possibly can. This will include some of the new projects the actors are working on that are also at SDCC, such as “The Strain” with Sean Astin, “Legends” with Sean Bean and “Outlander” starring Graham McTavish. See the video below for a message from Graham regarding SDCC:

Graham McTavish has confirmed he will be at SDCC, so consider this your official invite to our Laketown Luau on Friday night, beginning at 7pm at the Kona Kai resort on Shelter Island. The SDCC website has finally posted the shuttle routes and we can now announce that the Kona Kai is on the Teal shuttle route. You can find the shuttle schedule here and remember to click on the PDF link at the bottom for the map of the hotels and route information. The Teal route is set to take about 30 minutes to get you between the convention center and the hotel, but if you have a car, the distance is only 6 miles away.  Lake-town Luau

You can only attend the Laketown Luau by purchasing a ticket at our Eventbrite page. With loads of games and a relaxed, outdoor environment, this will be a family friendly party, so bring the kids.

We will update this post or make a new one as soon as we have confirmation of what Warner Bros. might be doing for film previews, including “The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies” and whether PJ will put in an appearance. Same goes for confirmation on other film projects, such as Richard Armitage’s ‘Into the Storm” and Luke Evans’ “Dracula Untold”. We already know Outlander will have a premiere event during SDCC.

Fili barrelThe Official Day 1 of FantasyCon was yesterday, July 3 and was filled with cosplay, LARPing, music and heraldry. A few awesome Middle-earth costumers visited our booth, and we even had a Dwarf in a Barrel. The barrel and the 4 Hobbits standee proved to be quite popular with those holding a camera, especially the children.

At 11am TheOneRing.net hosted their first panel at the convention with the Preview of The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies to an enthusiastic crowd. We fully expect that the trailer will be out by the time San Diego Comic Con rolls around in a few weeks, at which point our Preview panel will be dramatically updated.

Near the end of the day, the entirety of the Tolkien programming track was introduced on stage at the Middle-earth kickoff party. Artists, musicians, writers and TheOneRing.net staff on hand, plus an Avalanche of Dwarves, as John Rhys-Davies put it, a Wizard and a pair of Hobbits converged on the Main Ballroom stage to thunderous applause. Moments later, the entire room went silent, you could almost hear a pin drop, along with one wee Hobbit singing his heart out.

During the panel, numerous questions were asked of many Dwarves, Hobbits and a Wizard, but none were handled with quite so much originality as the one about the Dwarven prosthetics.

The day ended with the Red Party, a less bloody affair than the Red Wedding. Costumed denizens of Westeros and many other realms all danced the night away.

 

DominicMonaghan_Spider_640x360 Dominic Monaghan chats about his nature series Wild Things (which finally debuts on Australian telly this week) with Michael Idato of The Sydney Morning Herald.

 


Though he made his name as an actor, you could be forgiven for thinking Dominic Monaghan, crawling through the undergrowth in pursuit of his quarry, owes more to David Attenborough than Laurence Olivier. Continue reading “Dominic Monaghan chats about Wild Things”

DJEWoodSALT LAKE CITY — Elijah Wood isn’t joining fellow Fellowship actors Billy Boyd, Sean Astin and John Rhys-Davies for autographs and panels at FantasyCon July 3 – 5, but he is joining the adventure in other ways. The Daily Herald broke the news yesterday that Wood will DJ an evening event the night before it all starts to get FantasyCon rolling.

The event follows an invite-only charity event that same evening for seven different children’s charities that helps kids get access to FantasyCon that otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend an event like a big public convention. You can read more about Wood’s event RIGHT HERE and read more about the guests at FantasyCon here. Those who purchase VIP tickets (ticketing here) to FantasyCon look to have access to the event that will likely have very limited availability to the public. Continue reading “DJ E-Wood? FantasyCon lands Elijah Wood for its opening night party”

FantasyCon logoTheOneRing.net is a major part of FantasyCon coming up on July 3 – 5 in Salt Lake City and there is a pretty incredible lineup of of Middle-earth content at the show. We are counting the top 10 reasons to attend one of the largest Tolkien gatherings in the history of conventions. Continue reading “The top 10 reasons for Tolkienites to attend FantasyCon”

1401754684350.jpg-620x349 Viggo Mortensen chats with The Age newspaper about his latest movie effort, The Two Faces of January.


The voice on the phone is husky, familiar, and just a little menacing. “I was told to call this number,” the speaker says. I give a little shudder before realising it’s Viggo Mortensen, calling as planned to talk about his new film, The Two Faces of January. Phew. Continue reading “The many faces of Viggo Mortensen”