One Studio To Rule Them All...
The veiling shadow that glowers in the west takes shape. Warner Brothers will suffer no rival. From the summit of a water tower, its eye watches New Zealand ceaselessly.
For the long years and months MGM struggled to survive and other studios did their best to try and pick out the scraps of their library like vultures on a carcass. It was known that Warner Brothers in particular desired the rights to The Hobbit and was offering a handsome deal for them. MGM clung tightly to them though, with the hope that if they ever got their shit together they’d have cash-cows left to exploit. Hindsight seems to be proving that a wise decision, as MGM retains those rights even while partnering with Warner Brothers on a massive scale to get The Hobbit started.
As we are only a month out from the production rolling cameras, deals are being locked down and funding arrangements signed allowing Deadline to get word that Warner Brothers will ultimately be fronting the cash for the entire half-a-billion dollar endeavor. This is a “scoop” of sorts that follows up on the publicly announced development that Warner Brothers will also distribute the film globally, with MGM left with the worldwide TV rights (which, regardless of Netflix and the internet, still represents enormous money). So a new order has risen- a union of the two studios, with one building the massive capitalist mechanism that will back this production, while the other provides the fuel for the machine. WB would probably like to be running the show entirely with MGM involved not at all, but money talks and they have for all practical points and purposes taken over the The Hobbit films.
In other news that makes a mere financial arrangement worth mentioning, Peter Jackson has apparently been meeting with his old Lord of the Rings cast members, and locking down which of them will appear. TheOneRing.net broke the story that Elijah Wood had agreed to take a part in The Hobbit, and have since amended their story in response to internet speculation to confirm (*AND THIS IS WHERE THE SPOILERS START*) that Frodo will return in the prologues of the two films, with he and Bilbo’s written version of their tales being the center of the cameo. There is also word that Orlando Bloom and others have been approached, but only Elijah Wood has been confirmed. We’re still not sure if we’re getting one long, augmented version of The Hobbit, or The Hobbit as mostly contained to a single film along with a bridge film borne of Tolkien’s supplementary Middle-Earth material and material of Jackson’s own creation. Perhaps these cameos will be integral ways of sliding in Jackson’s own bridging material, or maybe they’ll all just happily crowd around the book with smiles, as the screen crossfades into the stories of old.
Along with Star Wars, it was partly the excitement of the Lord of the Rings production that fueled the creation of this here internet-based movie fanaticism, so it will be interesting to see how the modern machine focuses its hyper-updating gaze onto this new production. With only a month between now and the start of shooting, we don’t have long to wait.
DISCUSS this on our brand new CHUD MESSAGE BOARDS
10 comments
That water tower pic is priceless.
Elijar Wood returning sounds the death knell. All we need now is Gandalf being recast, Aragorn fighting alongside Legolas in the Battle of Fve Armies and Gimli being part of Thorins’s Company. This thing is doomed, doomed I tell you.
Agreed. I kind of wish there was a hi-res version available as a wallpaper.
I don’t think Elijah’s return is necessarily a bad thing. I always hoped the Hobbit movie(s) would be someone cracking open Bilbo’s memoirs and starting us up that way. I pictured it as Sam reading it to his kids, but if it’s Frodo, I can dig that.
Now, recasting Gandalf = boo. I hope they can get I-Mac back. He was just so great.
I just wish WB would fucking man up and give us the LOTR Extended versions on Blu-ray. That is all I care about. Until I am sitting in the theater watching The Hobbit, I don’t care about anything else.
Agreed.
No joke. I assume that this is more of a Peter Jackson decision and less of a WB decision, though.
The images used in these posts are hysterically awesome.
It’s already been noted that they’re waiting to release the Blu EE’s to coincide with The Hobbit.
I can’t shake the image of Yosemite Sam mounted on a fell beast. CON SARNIT!
I really don’t see why Jackson would be so desperate to knit this together with LotR — it’s like he thinks noone will make the association. Does he really think that little of us?
Comments are shown as archived from the original site; new comments are closed.