Celebriel over on TheOneRing.net alerts us to the fact that there are new bobbleheads of LOTR characters coming out, apparently timed to coincide with the Blu-ray release of the theatrical version of the trilogy.

Lots of people don’t like bobbleheads, especially people outside the U.S. who aren’t familiar with the concept. (I discuss the original bobbleheads briefly on p. 196, where I quote Ian McKellen on his destruction of the Gandalf the Grey bobblehead he was sent.) more »

In an article posted today by Variety, David McNary reports that MGM has announced March 19 as the deadline for the second round of bids on its assets. He reads this as “a sign that it may be near working out a sale or restructuring.”

After a first round of non-binding bids, MGM invited half a dozen participants to a second round of offers, this time binding. The main contenders that have been repeatedly mentioned as among the bidders are Time Warner and Lionsgate, with Time Warner considered the most likely buyer. MGM is co-producing The Hobbit with New Line Cinema, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Time Warner has $5 billion in cash from its sale of its cable systems, and Warner Bros. was the top-earning Hollywood studio in 2009. Given that the price for MGM is not expected to go past $2 billion, such a purchase would obviously be feasible.

According to McNary, “MGM is facing repayment of its $250 million revolving credit line in early April and a $1 billion payment on its $3.7 billion debt in July 2011.” During the past few months, the studio’s lenders have suspended interest payments, but that suspension ends on March 31 and is not likely to be renewed a second time.

Bloomberg Business Week reports today that MGM has invited a second round of bids for its assets by mid-March. At the end of March, the suspension of interest payments on the studio’s $3.7 billion debt ends.

According to three anonymous sources, “Billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries, Time Warner Inc., Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and Liberty Media Corp. are among the potential buyers examining MGM books.” (Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. dropped out without bidding in the first round.)  The article goes on, “Suitors are trying to assess the value of MGM assets that include a 4,100-movie library, future “Bond” movies and rights to co-distribute films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit.’”

The first round of bids is non-binding pending due diligence. (That means the process whereby the potential bidders sign non-disclosure agreements and are allowed to examine MGM’s assets and debts in order to determine what they think it’s worth.) As that process has gone forward, MGM has invited bidders it considers serious to move into the second round of bidding.

As always, I caution fans that MGM’s problems probably have little to do with the delays (short so far) that have been occurring on the Hobbit film’s progress. Warner Bros. no doubt put all sorts of contingency clauses into its contract with MGM. Warner may acquire the Hobbit rights if Time Warner buys MGM. If some other company buys MGM, it will presumably be bound by that same contract.

(A tip of the pointy wizard hat to Compa Mighty on the Hobbit message boards at TORN for alerting us to this story.)

TheOneRing.net alerts us to the fact that the LOTR official website has been redesigned in preparation for the April 6 release of the theatrical-version DVDs. Pre-orders are available.

So far there’s not a whole lot there, and maybe it will never grow large. I’m glad I still have my “Wizards” screensaver, acquired c. 2002, since all those and the other free downloads seem to be gone. (They did remain available for a long time.)

Not surprisingly, the old New Line shop is nowhere to be found. LOTR stuff is now sold on Warner Bros.’ online shop. There are still a few of the old franchise items on offer in the various categories–the Noble chess set and a half dozen or so of the Sideshow Weta figures and so on.

There’s also a link to the LOTR Facebook site. I’m rather glad that Facebook and Twitter weren’t around when I was researching the LOTR film trilogy and the internet. I’m on Facebook, but I’m barely active there, and I don’t tweet. In those days it was mostly Yahoo! groups and personal websites. Live Journal wasn’t even a factor yet.

I have to admit that the trilogy is slipped further back into history, but the franchise, however reduced, continues

As we await the outcome of the bidding process for the debt-ridden MGM studio, Variety has published an interesting story that sheds a little light on the process.

We’ve all heard about the slump in DVD sales, as viewers switch over to online rentals. In recent decades, with its production moribund or low, MGM has particularly depended on income from sales of its older films on DVD. Given that the studio was one of the top producers in Hollywood in its golden age, it has an impressive library of titles: The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain, North by Northwest.

That library is a big part of the package of assets that MGM is offering to bidders. According to Variety, though:

While MGM is hoping for more than $2 billion for more than 4,000 movies, including the James Bond franchise and half of the rights of two upcoming “Hobbit” films, and 10,000 TV episodes, the nearly 10 potential bidders, including Time Warner and Lionsgate are looking to pay less than that. [...]

While MGM was adept at repeatedly repackaging its top films on DVD, the older a film gets the less valuable it becomes to consumers, analysts say. There’s only so much coin that can be squeezed out of even a James Bond film, no matter how many special editions are released.

In the U.S. alone, MGM’s net receipts from DVDs fell from $140 million in its 2007 fiscal year to just $30 million by 2010, according to Edward Jay Epstein, whose book “The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies” is being published this month.

The implication seems to be that the Bond and Hobbit rights are playing a larger part in the overall calculations of the companies that are bidding on MGM’s assets than they might have without the decline in DVD sales.

Working my way through the stack of trade magazines that accumulated during my recent trip, I found two stories in The Hollywood Reporter that explain more about the MGM situation than I had seen in other sources. I’ll try to summarize what they say, as well as add a bit of recent news. (Online, the stories are here and here.)

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I’m still trying to catch up with everything that accumulated during my recent month in Europe. One thing I ran across was an interesting interview with Peter Jackson in ICG, the magazine of the International Cinematographers Guild. It’s in the December, 2009 print issue or online here.

Interviews by professionals in the film industry tend to be a bit more substantive than those by entertainment journalists–not surprisingly. But don’t be put off by the thought that this one is full of technical terms that you won’t understand. It’s pretty straightforward stuff.

It’s mostly on The Lovely Bones, but there are a number of topics touched on that reveal Peter’s ideas about adaptation and cinematography in general. I recommend it.

Back in 1995, Peter Jackson started looking for a project to show off the expanded digital-effects capacities he and his colleagues had built up for The Frighteners. With what at the time was naive optimism, they settled on The Lord of the Rings and set out to track down who had the production rights for it. Those rights belonged to producer Saul Zaentz, who was not inclined to sell them to anyone, let alone a little-known director from New Zealand.

Peter and company had, however, one advantage. Having distributed his 1994 film Heavenly Creatures through Miramax, Peter had an in with that art-film company and its co-founders, Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Indeed, he was required to give them an option on his next film. Through a happy coincidence, Zaentz owed Miramax a big favor, since the company had rescued his project The English Patient when Fox abruptly pulled the plug on its financing just before shooting began. After much negotiation with Zaentz, Harvey Weinstein acquired the trilogy’s rights, agreeing to produce a two-part adaptation of Tolkien’s novel with Peter to direct.

In retrospect, it seems impossible to believe that fans would have been satisfied with two features, especially when such elements as Galadriel and Lothlórien would have been left out entirely. But that version of the film went through 18 months of pre-production at Miramax.

Miramax was not a free agent, having been bought by Disney in 1993. In 1998 Michael Eisner, then head of Disney, declared that LOTR would be made as one inexpensive feature-length film or not at all. Peter declined to go forward and persuaded Harvey to put the film into turnaround for a few weeks, giving him a chance to try and sell the project to a different studio. Only one studio was interested, but that one was New Line, whose founder Bob Shaye wanted LOTR made as three features. The price was 5% of the trilogy’s revenues. Eisner had so little faith in the proposed adaptation, that he split the 5% between Disney and the Weinsteins!

(I tell this story in more detail in the first chapter of The Frodo Franchise.)

The Weinsteins subsequently left Miramax to form The Weinstein Company, probably in part using their considerable income from the trilogy. Their best-known recent film is Inglourious Basterds.

On Wednesday The Wrap announced that Disney is closing Miramax. Some of the firm’s important films, like Pulp Fiction and sex, lies, and videotape are mentioned, but there’s no reference to its key role in allowing LOTR to get made. After the Weinsteins’ departure, Miramax was a shadow of its former self, but it still had employees (80 have lost their jobs) and films scheduled to be released (six remain in limbo). Disney claims that the brand will not disappear, but it’s hard to imagine what they could do with it at this point.

On Friday TheOneRing.net posted a story about Variety’s story of the same day, concerning New Line’s successful transition into making a smaller number of medium-budget genre films. Many of those who clicked on the link, however, must have run afoul of Variety’s new pay-wall. Being a subscriber, I’ll pull out some more bits of information and try to tease some inferences out of them.  (For those who subscribe or who want to sign up to get a few Variety articles free, the story is here.) more »

Variety reported on January 18 that the first round of bidding for MGM’s assets is over. It hasn’t been disclosed which companies made bids, but according to the story:

Time Warner, India’s Reliance Entertainment, Lionsgate, AT&T, Liberty Media, Summit Entertainment and News Corp. are among the most likely bidders. More than a dozen companies have signed nondisclosure agreements allowing them to review MGM’s internal financials.

MGM’s assets include the 4,000-title library, the right to make new James Bond and Pink Panther movies, the Lion logo, the United Artists operations and half ownership of the two “Hobbit” movies.

None of the bids apparently topped $2 million, which was MGM’s target figure. The second round of bidding begins next week, with negotiations going on in the interim.

Reliance may seem an odd member of this group, but it’s a wealthy Indian company that has gone in for co-financing Hollywood films, including especially those of Warner Bros.

As I’ve said before, I don’t think the process of extracting MGM from its financial woes will have much impact on the ongoing production of The Hobbit. Whichever company ends up winning the auction, it will be obliged to honor the contract between MGM and Warner Bros. as it currently exists. Warner may well end up being the new owner of MGM’s assets, in which case the production/distribution rights to The Hobbit will be reunited decades after their separation.

(Note: As I’ve mentioned,Variety online recently became subscription only, so I’m no longer supplying links to stories, but I’ll try to quote and summarize  the most salient portions in reporting on them.)