The Lord of the Rings trilogy stars Liv Tyler and Viggo Mortensen are Hollywood’s ‘highest earning’ screen couple, says Forbes. “The coupling of Viggo Mortensen and Liv Tyler convinced a lot of girlfriends to sit through more than nine hours of orcs and wizards and hobbits. With $2.9 billion in worldwide earnings, the Lord of the Rings trilogy puts Mortensen and Tyler at the top of our list of Hollywood’s highest earning on-screen couples. More…
Category: Movie Return of the King
Our next episode of ‘TheOneRing.net Radio Show’ will air on January 24th at 2pm ET. Guests include author J.W. Braun (‘The Lord of the Films: The Unofficial Guide to Tolkien’s Middle-Earth on the Big Screen’). We’ll be taking phone calls, text messages and more! Click on the image above to view the radio show page.
J.W. Braun was born in the area where Dungeons and Dragons was invented and became fascinated by fantasy before he had a handle on reality. After reading The Lord of the Rings as a child in the 1980s, he became convinced that the books would one day become blockbuster films and began watching for news of potential projects. As the would-be blockbusters began to come to fruition, he followed the reports from the project from beginning to end, savouring every moment.
Order ‘The Lord of the Films: The Unofficial Guide to Tolkien’s Middle-Earth on the Big Screen’ on Amazon.com (Kindle version)
Dan writes: I thought I would let you know that “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy was voted the 7th best film of the decade by the very prestigious and influential Los Angles Film Critics’ Association this past week. You can see the full list and other info about the voting/members at LAFCA.net. More..
Paul writes: Andrew O’Hehir, film critic on Salon.com, has run a series of four posts on why the LOTR films got so much critical acclaim at their launch, but appeared on none of the top-films-of-the-decade critics lists of people he knew.
In his words: “To be clear, I’m genuinely not pimping any particular ideology. I enjoyed the films immensely, and wrote a rave about “Return of the King” for Salon at the time. But I can barely remember them today, feel unsure whether I’ll ever watch them again, and still don’t regret leaving them off my own personal decade-end list. Then again, this isn’t about my dumb-ass list, or Stephanie Zacharek’s, or anybody else’s; this was about the fact that when I reached out to 60 or 70 filmmakers, critics and bloggers I know, in search of entries for our Films of the Decade series, not one of them suggested Jackson’s colossal trilogy as a personal favorite. So something’s going on here, and these responses are helping me figure it out a little.” 1 2 3 4
From eonline.com Looks like James Cameron is the King of Middle Earth, too. With $1.14 billion worldwide and counting, Avatar has now overtaken the $1.1 billion raked in by 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to become the second-highest-grossing film in history.
In fact, Avatar is going so strong that what once seemed an out-of-this-world impossibility now seems within the realm of (virtual) reality. If the 20th Century Fox movie, which screens in both 2-D and 3-D formats, keeps up its current pace, it could catch the $1.8 billion in global ticket sales tallied by the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s own Titanic.
If that wasn’t enough (and it never is in Tinseltown), Fox’s FX cable network has reportedly paid upward of $25 million for the TV rights to Avatar, which will premiere in 2012. And that makes Cameron’s blue folk even more green.
Hollywood is preparing to re-release some past hits, including Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, in 3-D following the record-breaking success of Avatar. Studio executives are drawing up schedules of popular films that will be “retro-fitted” with 3-D technology after the science fiction blockbuster, directed by James Cameron, last week became the second highest grossing movie of all time.
A 3-D version of Avatar has driven ticket sales to more than $1.14 billion (£700m) in just three weeks; only Titanic, Cameron’s 1997 epic, has made more money at the box office. Rival studios had been waiting to see if Avatar took the 3-D experience — albeit using special glasses — beyond the popularity of animated tales such Monsters vs Aliens. More..