Ringer Spy Baba19 sends along these images from the FOTR DVD Special Edition! Take a look!
Category: Old Special Reports
At this time last year, movie audiences were looking ahead to a holiday season dominated by “Harry Potter” and “The Lord of the Rings.” This year, they are looking forward to one dominated by “Harry Potter” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
On the surface, it’s déjà vu. But there are significant differences this time as the films square off. The “Harry Potter” series is moving into darker territory to attract a slightly older, teenage audience, and there is speculation in Hollywood that the “Lord of the Rings” series will supplant “Harry Potter” as the season’s box-office champion.
While the two movie series feature wizards and elves and other fantasy elements, they are really quite different and have appealed to subtly different audiences. The first “Harry Potter” was a classic family film, drawing in children and their parents, as well as enough from other demographic groups to create a hit. “The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring,” the first in the trilogy, was an action epic that played most strongly to males in their teens and 20’s.
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” the first installment in what Warner Brothers hopes will be a multifilm franchise drawing cash into many AOL Time Warner divisions for years to come, made $318 million in United States theaters after opening last November.
“The Fellowship of the Ring” — an expensive gamble on which executives at New Line Cinema, also part of AOL Time Warner, practically staked the future of the studio — was more of a question mark before its opening. But the film was a box-office and a critical triumph, making $313 million in United States theaters and earning 14 Oscar nominations.
This year, the best guess from Wall Street analysts, professional box-office watchers and Hollywood executives — inside and outside the two studios — is that “Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets” (opening on Nov. 15) and “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” (Dec. 18) will dominate the holiday season, taking in at least $600 million between them in the United States, and twice that much overseas. But many expect “Lord of the Rings” to beat “Harry Potter” this year.
“I think people liked the first `Harry Potter’ movie, but they didn’t love it,” said one rival studio executive. “And I think it’s going to show at the box office.”
Another top studio executive, who also insisted on anonymity, put it this way: “Last year, I took my kids to see `Harry Potter.’ The curiosity factor was so high. I wanted to see it, too. This year, I’m dropping them off at the theater.”
Jessica Rief-Cohen, an entertainment analyst at Merrill Lynch, said that even if audiences were not as blown away by the first “Harry Potter” as they might have been, the series remained hot. “I thought the first movie was O.K., though the book was better,” she said. “But it’s going to be a monster hit, no matter how you look at it.”
Warner Brothers executives say their research shows that anticipation for the second “Harry Potter” film is just as high as it was for the first and carries to all ages.
“You just have to look at all the buzz around when J. K. Rowling will release the upcoming fifth book in the series and you can see that interest in the series is as intense as ever,” said Dawn Taubin, the president of domestic marketing at Warner Brothers. The next book, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” is expected next year.
Ms. Taubin dismissed any idea that the lack of a new “Harry Potter” volume in bookstores this year might have dampened interest in the series. “Last year, when there was a new book out, it became almost a whole year of `Harry Potter’ hype,” she said. “This year, we’re it.”
Whether the second “Harry Potter” does as well as the first — which had a $90-million opening weekend — will depend on many factors, including competition from family-oriented films like “Santa Clause 2” (opening on Nov. 1), “Treasure Planet” (Nov. 27) and “The Wild Thornberrys” (Dec. 20).
“I think certainly the issues for `Harry Potter’ and `Lord of the Rings’ are different than they were a year ago,” said Russell Schwartz, New Line’s president for domestic marketing. “Last year, it was all about `Harry Potter’ being the 800-pound gorilla, and it certainly delivered like that at the box office, if not with the critics. With `Lord of the Rings,’ no one really knew what to expect, so we had the great element of surprise and a kind of wow factor. This year, we both have to live up to what we did last year.”
The game of box-office expectations can drive movie studio executives crazy. “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones” made $302 million in American theaters last summer, a substantial sum for any film. But expectations for the lucrative series were so high that when rival “Spider-Man” made even more ($404 million), some people in Hollywood considered “Star Wars” a box-office disappointment.
On Wall Street and among merchandisers, opinions differ about which film will end up on top, though there is unanimity that “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter” will each rank among the two biggest hits. Either way, it is good news for AOL Time Warner, which could use some good news.
Other potential holiday hits include “Die Another Day,” a James Bond movie; sequels like “Star Trek: Nemesis” and “Analyze That”; and unknowns like “Catch Me If You Can,” a Steven Spielberg film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. They are expected to do well, though not as well as “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings.”
Warner Brothers executives also point to differences between the first “Harry Potter” film and the second — differences that should be apparent to anyone studying the posters and billboard that have begun to appear. The young heroes in the posters look older, tougher and a little more determined. The one featuring Daniel Radcliffe as Harry shows him grimly wielding a gleaming sword covered in archaic runes, an image that seems borrowed from “The Lord of the Rings” and calculated to appeal to that trilogy’s older demographic.
“The campaign is a bit edgier, a bit darker,” Ms. Taubin said, in keeping with the more action-packed nature of the second installment.
And while Warner Brothers acknowledges that its family film will not deliver the violent thrills that might appeal to an older action audience, it says it hopes that more viewers between the ages 12 and 16 might be lured to theaters.
Last year, the mantra at Warner Brothers about how to handle the first “Harry Potter” film was “less is more.” The idea was to avoid pushing so hard to wring cash out of the first film that it put a bad taste in the mouths of parents and threatened the series’ long, lucrative life, so merchandising licensing was modest for such a major film.
This year, the game plan is to do more of the same, and to not get so transfixed on expectations or on out-performing either the first “Harry Potter” film or the latest “Lord of the Rings” installment that it harms the series’ long-term potential.
And the mantra this year?
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” said Diane Henry, who manages the “Harry Potter” brand for Warner Brothers.
For months we’ve been gifted with screen shots and pre-production notes that have left us anticipating this digital venture into Peter Jackson’s rendition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. First installment from Electronic Arts in this series is the upcoming cinematic release of The Two Towers. While a lot of the early game play consists of scenes from The Fellowship of the Ring, the game evolves as a discussion between Aragorn and Eowyn which brings us through the events of The Fellowship of the Ring and explains to her how the Three Hunters and the White Wizard had made their way from Rivendell to Rohan.
First in our jaunt down memory lane is relived as Isildur during the Last Alliance of Elves and Men and the stripping of The One Ring from the hand of Sauron. Fighting through legions of Mordor Orcs the game presents its player with a beautiful region swarming with minions of Good and Evil, including High Elven Warriors and Lord Elrond! As these sequences come to an end the opening scenes from the Fellowship of the Ring continue and we’re brought to Weathertop as Aragorn fights off the Nazgul on their search for the Ring-bearer. One beautifully rendered sequence after another takes you through the events of the Watcher in the Water, the Cave Troll, and Amon Hen.
Graphically the artistic detail present in the Two Towers game is as close to the real thing as you can get without a plane ticket to New Zealand. Armor and Scenery are taken directly from actual film footage and digitally transformed into a Three Dimensional wonderland for Rangers, Elves, and Dwarves to enjoy. The detail the designers went into with this game seem to equal the detail and dedication of the WETA Workshop workers who first dedicated their creative efforts to bringing Middle Earth to life. Luckily, for all gamers out there, it doesn’t just end at detail.
As you progress through the Two Towers you unlock Exclusive Interviews from Viggo Mortensen, Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, John Rhys-Davies, and Sir Ian McKellan as the voice actors for this game were the actual actors from the film! We’re also treated to a preview of the Two Towers by Peter Jackson himself! Leveling up Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli unlock secret levels and art galleries, completing levels unlocks cheat codes and other such goodies. The secret and special content of this game is reminiscent of a DVD Special Features disk, which serves as an added bonus to the already amazing Game Play.
Overall the Two Towers from Electronic Arts delivers more than could ever be expected from a video game, with special features and stunning graphical presentation that will give other games a run for your money, for some time. The only flaws, if this can even be considered a flaw, is the opening load time with the title graphics from both EA and New Line, but after those short loading frames the following experience is second to none. I give The Two Towers from Electronic Arts a beautifully sharpened 9 out of 10.
Want to give The Two Towers a go? Swing by Amazon.com and pick up your copy now! Then drop us a line to Havens@TheOneRing.net and tell us what you think!
Richard writes: I was debating on whether to post this to the internet world, because it might jepardoze my chance in getting tickets since they go on sale sometime next week and nobody has made mention of it. The website does not contain the information yet. My source is the LAWeekly, a local freebie paper:
Saturday, December 14 at 4:00pm
HOWARD SHORE, composer
An illustrated lecture by the composer
of the score for Lord Of The Rings @ LACMA
5905 Wilshire Blvd. (east of Fairfax)
Los Angeles, California
323.857.6010
www.lacma.org
From: Trey Kay
I produced a feature story on the Public Radio International program, Studio 360. This show will explore how we define success in art. My segment will focus on “Successful Passages.” That is, moments that work perfectly in a piece of art — the place where everything comes together splendidly, whether or not the artwork works as a whole.
For this piece, I interviewed Alan Lee, art director of the Lord of the Rings films, as well as, Damian Woetzel, dancer from the New York City Ballet and the innovative American painter Alex Katz.
If you are in New York, Studio 360 airs on Saturday mornings at 10 a.m. on WNYC 93.9 FM and on Sunday evenings at 7 p.m. on WNYC AM 820.
If you are in another part of the country, check our web site www.studio360.org, you will be able to find local station listings and broadcast times.
If you are unable to listen to the show when it airs, you can hear this show or any of the other stories that I have produced on the shows web site. You will need Real Player to listen the segment. Click onto the archives and find the show with my piece.
Also, check out www.nextbigthing.org to the piece that I did with former Talking Head Tina Weymouth. In this segment, she speaks about how seeing Muddy Waters changed her life. “Muddy Made Me” (6/1/2002)
Frederik writes: I wanted you to know that Howard Shore will be performing a suite from the score of FOTR in Ghent (Belgium) on october 18th during the second World Soundtrack Awards. He might win the price for best score of 2002!
Here are the nominees for 2002 (and his competitors !):
Soundtrack Componist of the year:
– Patrick Doyle (“Gosford Park”)
– James Horner (“A Beautiful Mind”)
– Randy Newman (“Monsters Inc”)
– Howard Shore (“Lord of the Rings”)
– Hans Zimmer (“Black Hawk Down”)
Best original soundtrack of the year:
– “Black Hawk Down” (by Hans Zimmer)
– “Lord of the Rings” (by Howard Shore)
– “Monsters, Inc” (by Randy Newman)
– “Spider Man” (by Danny Elfman)
– “Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones” (by John Williams)