With the public screenings now on in New Zealand and England and a day away in the U.S. and Canada, it seems a good time to continue to celebrate Hobbit Week and share some of the footage we gathered on the red carpet in Wellington, New Zealand. And this time instead of speaking to the media in general, they are speaking directly to you, the community that makes up TheOneRing.net. We have saved this footage for just the right time but here in the states it feels like ‘Hobbit Eve’ and there hasn’t been a lull in the media for weeks so it is now or never! Hope you enjoy some short visits and appearances by Adam Brown, Andy Serkis, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, James Cameron, John Callen, Mark Hadlow, Martin Freeman, Peter Hambleton, Richard Armitage, Stephen Hunter and William Kircher. Enjoy!

Guillermo del Toro is on record saying he would love to someday make H.P. Lovecraft’s “At The Mountains of Madness,” but that no studio was about to give him money for that project. But he happened to be living in New Zealand for a while during James Cameron’s work there on big 3D project “Avatar.” (You might have heard of it.) It is pretty easy to imagine the two of them sitting around with Peter Jackson discussing dream projects and things that are difficult to get studio approval for. Cameron has faced that prospect himself a time or two. Deadline.com is reporting that the pair will now be working together on GDT’s dream project, with Cameron lending his name and clout to the project as a producer. Continue reading “Guillermo and Cameron go ‘Mountain’ climbing?”

In case you were unplugged and off the information grid all weekend, TheOneRing.net broke the story that Guillermo del Toro has stepped away from directing duties on two planned (hoped for) films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.” We are assured (by one of the super-good inside sources) that GDT’s DNA in the form of script and design and pre-viz work will remain in place, new director willing. And why would they find a director who isn’t willing or wants to revisit the same work?

After getting over the shock and feeling the loss of our message board member’s departure, and wishing him all the best, the question now becomes: Who will direct “The Hobbit”? We have some ideas and maybe even some insights. Continue reading “Who will helm ‘The Hobbit’?”

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.

Directors Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Jason Reitman, Lee Daniels, and Kathryn Bigelow take part in a roundtable discussion of their craft.

All six directors have films that are earning critical raves: Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” Cameron’s “Avatar,” Reitman’s “Up in the Air,” Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones,” Daniels’ “Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire,” and Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker. More..