On 2/6/07 Lionsgate will release The Last Unicorn: 25th Anniversary Edition — a widescreen digitally remastered DVD version of the animated classic, including additional features and material — with special Conlan Press distribution on behalf of author and screenwriter Peter S. Beagle. The Last Unicorn has been a worldwide success in its theatrical film, cable, VHS, and DVD versions. But to date, author and screenwriter Peter S. Beagle has never been paid anything from the millions of dollars the film has earned. [More]
Category: Original TORn
Be sure to check out our weekly Sideshow Collectibles update! Each week we provide an update on your favorite Sideshow goodies, from busts to premium figures and more! Take a look! [More]
Peter S. Beagle is known worldwide for his novels, non-fiction, and screenplays. His most famous work, The Last Unicorn, has sold more than six million copies and routinely polls as one of the Top 10 fantasy novels of all time (Its follow-up, “Two Hearts,” just won the 2006 Hugo Award). Peter is deeply involved in Middle-earth, having written the famous introductory page in Ballantine’s LOTR paperback editions and the screenplay for Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings. This coming February 6, 2007, Lionsgate Entertainment will release a special 25th Anniversary DVD of The Last Unicorn, with a screenplay by Beagle [FANS: help Peters cause by purchasing your autographed DVD exclusively from Conlan Press!].
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As a fiction writer with some experience with the film world, I’m very clear on at least one aspect of the business: you never know the whole story. That applies to other people, as well as writers — it’s entirely possible that Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh don’t really know the deepest motives behind New Line’s behavior, and never may. I think it’s been so from the days of The Great Train Robbery.
Once, long ago, I said lightly to Ralph Bakshi, “Of course, everybody down there in Hollywood keeps three separate sets of books.” To which Bakshi replied, “Hell, yes!” I was joking. He wasn’t. I learned all about that when it came time for me to collect the last half of my own miserly $5,000 pay for writing the animated version of Lord of the Rings, only to find that I had to threaten to sue Saul Zaentz in order to get it. (And I am still fighting, all these years later, to try and make him live up to his other promises. Click here if you are curious.)
I am far less knowledgeable and opinionated about directors than I am about scripts and screenwriters. But I do believe that, certain flaws aside, Peter Jackson made as good a Lord of the Rings as we are ever likely to see outside the multiplex of our minds. Someone else quite possibly might have made it as well — as someone else may well make a perfectly good film of The Hobbit — but I know something of LOTR’s nearly-half-century journey to the screen, and I don’t believe that anyone else could have gotten it made. We’re not talking about special effects unavailable twenty years ago, but about obsession: about a certain kind of madness, if you like. Madness allied to talent, to commitment, to love… as George Gobel, a comedian of my youth, used to say, “You can’t hardly get them kind no more.”
And you can’t.
Peter S. Beagle
From: 1up.com: Under the condition of anonymity a source revealed to 1UP that the ambitious, licensed, RPG that was to be Lord of the Rings: The White Council is no more. The RPG, a game that was titled Project Gray Company before the Lord of the Rings’ veil was lifted in July, was to be a game where players participated in the battle for Middle Earth, but not as one of the Tolkien-series’ main characters. [More]
Codemasters has released a new trailer for Turbine’s upcoming Lord of the Rings MMORPG, which it’s publishing later this year. Available exclusively through Eurogamer TV, the trailer shows off lots of Shire-y locations. And if you’ve not checked it out in the past, you ought to take a look at our Shadows of Angmar gamepage, where all the cool hobbits hang out. [More]
Cate Blanchett is on the way to winning her second Academy Award in three years, but Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman had their Oscar hopes dashed. The Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG) nomination ceremony, a key indicator for next month’s Oscars, was held in West Hollywood with Blanchett scoring two nominations. Australians Toni Collette and Alan Dale were also nominated. Watts, for her performance in The Painted Veil and Kidman for Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, were both snubbed by SAG voters. [More]