TheOneRing.net has alerted us to a new interview with Guillermo Del Toro on The Scotsman website. (Hellboy II is being released in Scotland on August 20.) Having read a lot of interviews with GDT, I was afraid this one would just be a carbon copy of the earlier ones publishedwhen the film premiered in the U.S. Fortunately it’s different enough to be interesting, and I think it offers some insights not only to GDT’s personality but to the way he will approach filming The Hobbit. In his desire to work without interference from the production firm, he sounds distinctly like Peter Jackson.

By the way, I was too optimistic in suggesting that Hellboy II was a hit. It did quite well on its opening weekend, but that opening was one week before that of The Dark Knight–which obviously swamped everything in its path. It was unfortunate timing, and Hellboy II took a plunge in its second week and never recovered. Now it seems to have disappeared from first-run theaters, at least here in Madison. I’m sure it will be back, at least in cities and towns that have second-run (i.e., cheap seat) theaters. So far the film has opened in very few foreign countries, so maybe it can bring in more money abroad.

I’d recommend it. It’s very well made, and it’s also great fun, without stressing the fashionable “dark themes” that seem inescapable in other superhero fare this summer. (Hellboy II has its dark themes, but it employs a light touch in dealing with them.) The production design is impressive and the special effects are terrific. With a budget of only about $80 million, it looks better than blockbusters made for twice that much. Worth catching on the big screen if you can, on DVD if you can’t.

One of the first people I interviewed while researching The Frodo Franchise was Dr. Ruth Harley, who since 1997 has been the CEO of the New Zealand Film Commission. The NZFC (linked in my blogroll) is the government agency that helps foster local filmmaking–not location work by outside projects like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or The Last Samurai (that’s the province of Film New Zealand), but features and shorts by local filmmakers like Niki Caro and Geoff Murphy. I talked with Ruth twice, once in October of 2003, in the Wellington headquarters of the commission, and again in November of 2005, as my research was winding down, at the American Film Market. She provided insights into the impact that The Lord of the Rings had on Kiwi production. As I describe in Chapter 10 of my book, despite early fears that the trilogy would overwhelm local filmmaking, it turned out to be a real boon for the industry there.

Dr. Ruth Harley, third from left in front row, and the Rt. Hon. Helen Clark, Prime Minister and Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, fourth from left, with the board of the New Zealand Film Commission

Now I read in Variety that Ruth has taken a post as head of the newly formed equivalent institution of New Zealand’s neighbor across the Tasman Sea, Screen Australia. The article describes this as “the top federal job in Oz showbiz.” If for one reason or another I should ever find myself in New Zealand again researching another book, I would miss being able to interview Ruth yet again, though I am sure that her successor would also be able to help me a great deal. I wish her the best in her new post.

In Chapter 4 of The Frodo Franchise, I discuss how studios with big franchises can line up “brand partners” to help bear the ballooning costs of advertising blockbusters. Other companies with brand-name recognition use characters or images from the film in the ads for their own products. They get to associate those products with a popular (with luck!) film, and the producer can get tens of millions of dollars in free ads. The Lord of the Rings had such partners as JVC, Kia, Duracell, and Verizon.

Now Variety has posted an excellent story on the brand partners for the upcoming James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. Author Marc Graser quotes industry estimates that put the amount of free advertising for the previous Bond entry, Casino Royale, at around $100 million. Probably that much will be spent on this new one. Graser also talks about which companies are on board this time and the new Bond-themes products that they plan to release in conjunction with the film. Omega watches, Smirnoff vodka, and Virgin Atlantic are among the associated brands. (The Trilogy had Air New Zealand, the main example I used in my book.)

If you were intrigued by the way these big companies help each other in creating mutual publicity, Graser’s article lays the whole thing out clearly and succinctly. You can be sure that the same sort of thing will happen with The Hobbit and “Film 2.”

I was very surprised to read on Variety’s website today that the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is being put off from its scheduled date of November 21 to July 17 of next year. Not that that exactly has anything to do with The Lord of the Rings films. Still, many of you will remember those exciting days of late 2001, when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (November 16) and The Fellowship of the Ring (December 19) were about to come out so close together. To some extent they were seen as competing with each other. Well, that may make for a more dramatic news story, but it turned out that there was plenty of enthusiasm about both–and plenty of wealth to share. Two of the biggest film franchises were thus launched only about a month apart.

The Harry Potter films were recently touted as the highest-grossing franchise of all time. True, HP’s $4,485,097,295 total is higher than LOTR’s $2,916,919,070. But it’s five films to three. Averaging them per film, HP comes out at $897,097,259 and LOTR $972,306,356. But however you count it, they’ve both done really, really well. And if we were to adjust total grosses for inflation, I suspect James Bond would still come out on top, given how many films there have been, and Star Wars would be right up there as well.

Warner Bros. produced and will distribute Half-Blood Prince. According to Variety it has delayed the release in order to beef up its summer schedule for next year, which is weak on blockbusters as a result of the recent Writers Guild of America screenwriters’ strike. Up to now, Terminator Salvation had been its only “tentpole” picture for that season. Released in July, 2007, Order of the Phoenix grossed $938,468,864, and WB is hoping that history will repeat itself. So it’s a strategic move, not one that has anything to do with problems relating to the production of the film itself.

That means we’ll get the last three HP films in the summer of 2009, autumn of 2010, and summer of 2011, the latter two dates being announced for the halves of The Deathly Hallows. Conveniently enough—if all goes as planned—The Hobbit will appear in December of 2011, with “Film 2” announced for December 2012. So after a long pause in the wake of The Return of the King, the two franchises sort of come together again, with the LOTR series reviving just after the HP films end. Given that Warners will be distributing The Hobbit and “Film 2” for New Line, it will be virtually guaranteed some big hits during that period.

By the way, Daniel Radcliffe appears on the cover of the upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly, which contains its annual fall movie previews. Bad timing, but I would imagine that Warner Bros. can get another cover story next summer for its HP release. Time Warner owns Entertainment Weekly.

(I’m currently plowing through the many legal documents that have been filed recently in the Tolkien Trust’s lawsuit against New Line, including the texts of the 1969 contracts for the deals selling the film rights of LOTR and The Hobbit to United Artists. I hope to post a summary within a few days.)

Variety reported today that Harry Sloan, Chairman and CEO of MGM, has signed a contract to continue for another three years in those positions. I’ve written before about Sloan, who is generally credited with having helped New Line Cinema and Peter Jackson reach a settlement of Peter’s lawsuit against the studio. That in turn led to the announcement that MGM and New Line would co-produce The Hobbit and “Film 2″. The Variety article has a good summary of what Sloan has accomplished in building up MGM in the three years he has so far been in charge of the company.

Wandering around Comic-Con on its closing day, July 27, I spotted a couple of LOTR franchise items. Above, the “Lord of the Rings Masterpieces II” trading cards on display in the Topps exhibit. Below, a gamer tests “The Lord of the Rings: Conquest” in the EA booth. (Sorry the image isn’t very good, but that booth was jammed, and I couldn’t get a good angle.) It didn’t take much foresight for me to predict in The Frodo Franchise that the franchise would live on for years, albeit in a reduced way. Here, along with the Sideshow Collectibles photo in the previous post, is the proof.

Yesterday I posted a more general entry about Comic-Con on “Observations on Film Art and film art,” with a brief reference to the Hobbit panel and a photo.

My first Comic-Con experience has been pretty exciting so far. I can’t say that generalization applied to standing in the Press and Professional line to get my badge—though it can’t actually have been more than about 25 minutes and was handled pretty efficiently. The line of people waiting to get their purchased four-day passes seemed to stretch to the horizon. Once I had my badge, I headed inside for the Wednesday night preview of the contents of the enormous exhibition hall.

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Recently I had trouble inserting a photo into one of my blog entries. Given that adding illustrations to my blogs is about the height of my technological expertise, this worried me—especially with Comic-Con coming up. I hope to bring you many photos of LOTR- and Hobbit-related events there.

So I figured I should put up a test entry to make sure I can cope with photos. What photo to use, though? For some reason I thought of some pics I took of the big Gollum model that for all too short a time loomed above one of the wings of the Wellington airport.

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Now that I’m back from Italy, I’ve been catching up with the many little pieces of Hobbit-project news that have come out since my departure on June 25. Of course Guillermo Del Toro has been helping to publicize Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and of course just about every interviewer asked him about The Hobbit.

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Today TheOneRing.net announced that its team will be interviewing Richard Taylor and John Howe at Comic-Con. That event will happen at the Weta Workshop booth (#2615) at 4:00 on Thursday, July 24.

The interview is in connection with a forthcoming documentary on Renaissance martial arts, Reclaiming the Blade, produced by Galatia Films. Richard and John will be in the film, as will Viggo Mortensen, Karl Urban, and Bob Anderson (who taught the main actors swordfighting for the trilogy). John Rhys-Davies will narrate. These Comic-Con interviews will discuss Richard and John’s other project as well.

Immediately after the interview Richard and John will autograph mini-posters for the film. The interview itself will be recorded on video, which will then be posted both on TORN and on the Reclaiming the Blade website.

Snooping around the latter, I discovered that Galatia has posted some short videos on YouTube. One, from April 23, has excerpts from an interview with Richard at Weta Workshop. Another, posted March 26, features Mortensen and Anderson. Check out the index page, with links, here.