Guillermo Del Toro being the mensch that he is, went back online this week (hey, it’s not a holiday week in Mexico) to talk more details about The Hobbit. Of course, there aren’t many details left to share at this point—filming doesn’t begin until 2010, and they haven’t even figured out the shortlist for Bilbo yet. But the conversation at BilboHobbit.com contains a few small tidbits that at least the diehard del Toro and Hobbit fans will enjoy.
First of all, he promises lots of creatures and puppets on the scale of the ones in Hellboy 2, focusing on some of the creatures who barely showed up in Lord of the Rings. ”We will be pushing the goblin kingdom. We will be pushing Smaug, the Spiders of Mirkwood. We will be pushing them to the edge of technology where we will fuse animatronics and CGI into a seamless new art form in creating creatures.” Sounds cool, but who will be helping him pull it off? None other than several of his Hellboy creators, if del Toro has his way. “[Mike] Mignola [creator of Hellboy and writer of the movies], [Wayne] Barlowe [visual designer], Spectral Motion, Guillermo Navarro [cinematographer] and others…”
Del Toro’s most exciting promises, as usual, come on the visual effects front. “You will see some mind-boggling mixture of CGI / Puppetry like never before. The demarcation of where one technique ends and the other begins will NOT be as clean as in HBII or BLADE II or PAN’S LABYRINTH. I am going to push further than ever on both fronts.” At this point we’re all just ready for del Toro to stop making promises and make the movie already, but hey, these things take time. At least he’s continuing to keep the fans posted, and hey, we might be learning about Bilbo soon!
Link to article...
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Del-Toro-Talks-Even-More-Hobbit-Details-11043.htmlIt sounds like all the time Guillermo del Toro has been spending with Peter Jackson has had its effect. Del toro, when discussing The Hobbit, is sounding a lot like Jackson did when talking about his three Lord of the Rings movies-- a good thing for anyone hoping for two movies as narratively consistent as LOTR, which should be pretty much all of us. Del Toro spoke to MTV News about the two Hobbit, and suggested that one day it will be possible to consider his two films and Jackson's three as one, continuous movie.
"We all agree that if we do our job right, it should all feel like a continuous journey. That’s what we’re striving for. If we do our job right, you put in The Hobbit and you wind up watching the entire Pentology!” Does del Toro really think so little of us that he thinks we have nothing to do than to spend about 15 hours watching five movies? And how did he find out how he spends my Saturday?
Del Toro is still mum on details about the second movie, which bridges the gap in story between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, and will presumably involve a lot of hobbits dancing merrily in the Shire. We don't even know when the first movie will leave off, or how closely it will follow the events of the book; all del Toro is saying is “I think Smaug dies in the first movie. So draw your own conclusions.”
Del Toro is a doll to make himself open to reporter questions so frequently, especially when the questions can be really inane, really specific ones from Tolkien fanatics. And it's impressive that we're usually satisfied with whatever answers he gives, even when they're as vague as these. Shouldn't there come a point where we can leave the guy alone, and leave him to mess around with models of dragons and finally cast Bilbo?
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Guillermo-del-Toro-Has-Ideas-For-How-To-Waste-A-Day-10467.htmlThere’s probably no reason for panic yet, but Viggo Mortensen thought you might want to know that nobody has talked to him about being in Guillermo del Toro’s new set of Lord of the Rings films. MTV asked him what was up with those Hobbit movies and he said, “I haven’t heard anything… I met [Guillermo] once years ago, but haven’t talked to him since.”
They’re still in the scriptwriting stage, so there may be no reason to talk to him yet. Though if you’re the production company in charge of this thing you might want to start thinking about getting these actors under some sort of contract before they get too busy doing something else. In the case of Mortensen though, they probably have plenty of time to spare in that regard. Odds are he won’t be in the first movie anyway, since it’s supposed to stick fairly closely to “The Hobbit” novel, in which his character of Aragorn makes no appearance. If there’s a place for Aragorn, it’ll be in the second movie which is still a long, long, long way off.
That probably explains why people like Ian McKellan, who would appear as Gandalf in the very first movie, has been running around telling everyone that he’s already in. They’d have to get him locked up first. The good news is that Viggo still seems keen to do it. He affirms, “Obviously,” he said. “I would rather have the chance to play that role myself since I originated it on film than have someone else do it.”
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Viggo-Hasn-t-Heard-Anything-About-The-Hobbit-10226.htmlThe Watchmen isn’t the only movie in risk of being shut down by lawsuits and Alan Moore isn’t the only batshit author determined to condemn any adaptation of his work. The same is true of The Hobbit, which has been fighting a legal battle against J.R.R. Tolkien’s heirs for several months now.
Tolkien’s son Christopher Tolkien has long been opposed to any adaptation of his father’s work. He hasn’t seen the Lord of the Rings movies, but he hates them. Recently, he’s been petitioning the courts to halt production of The Hobbit. At issue is cold hard cash. He says New Line Cinema owes him money. Whether or not that’s true, today things took a step forward when according to the AP, a judge did the exact opposite and instead chose to bar Tolkien’s estate from seeking punitive damages against New Line.
They had been seeking, in addition to a shutdown of The Hobbit, more than $150 million in payouts, and here’s where things get a bit confusing. The AP’s story says that even though they’ve been barred from seeking punitive damages, an LA Superior Court Judge has also ruled that the Tolkien Estate have established a legal basis for a fraud claim against New Line. No, I do not know what that means. Is there a lawyer in the house? Put those law degrees to work and email me with an explanation. How can the Tolkien Estate can be barred from seeking damages while at the same time getting the go-ahead for a fraud claim, and should we be worried or not? Someone tell me how to feel!
Whatever it means, the trial is now scheduled for October of 2009. By then The Hobbit should be well along in production and I’ll be a quivering, weeping mass of legal confusion.
Link to article....
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/The-Hobbit-Lawsuit-Continues-10331.htmlJust thought I would let my fellow Del Toro/Hobbit fans know about these articles!
-T.ROSS PRODUCTIONS
December 31, 2008, 11:50:03 AM
