Despite The Golden Compass‘ less than sparkling performances at the U.S. box-office, New Line seem to have gone for an attractive DVD presentation. Like The Lord of the Rings, the two-disc set is in the Platinum series. It has “only” two and a half hours of special features, but just about anything would look short compared with Michael Pellerin’s splendid making-of films on the trilogy’s extended-edition DVDs.

Variety‘s review praises the “intricate behind-the-scenes look at the film’s award-winning production design team” and adds that “the pre-production docs are top notch here, beginning with “The Alitheometer,” a meticulous portrait of the prop team’s research and assemblage of the Golden Compass or “truth measurer” in four weeks’ time.” The reviewer adds, “Another bright spot is “Armoured Bears,” a fascinating breakdown of the panserbjorne fight sequence, which took animators a grueling six months to create, starting with a “hokey” reenactment using paper miniatures, a foamcore arena and a lipstick cam.”

Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman did not participate, but I’m usually more interested in what the craftspeople, technical experts, and director have to say.

The set’s extras include “the ‘Launch’ scenes at the Cannes Film Festival.” I’m glad someone had the foresight to films that event. I only wish there was some footage of the extraordinary party that New Line put on during the Cannes Film Festival of 2001. (Maybe there is some somewhere, but all I’ve seen are some brief, shaky images of some of the guests arriving.)

It’ll be interesting to see how sales go. I suspect the set will do well; DVDs for kids usually do. Whether it will sell enough copies to justify adapting the second and third volumes remains to be seen.

On April 24, Variety.com’s deputy editor, Anne Thompson, wrote a short piece entitled “Hobbit Watch: Del Toro’s the Right Guy.” It was a response, of course, to the announcement that Guillermo Del Toro will direct the two Hobbit films. She wrote, “There is rejoicing throughout the land, I suspect. If it wasn’t going to be Peter Jackson (who is exec producing with Fran Walsh), Pan’s Labyrinth helmer Del Toro is just about a perfect match for this J. R. R. Tolkien fantasy. It will be cool.” more »

TheOneRing.net has posted a new interview with Guillermo Del Toro about his plans for The Hobbit films. The director also posted a brief note on the forums there. It doesn’t contain much news, but Del Toro says he’ll be posting there from time to time. It sounds like he will be trying to maintain a direct link to the fans. Peter Jackson did this as well during the making of the trilogy, though to some extent he was limited by New Line’s publicity policies. Studios have loosened up a bit by now in terms of allowing filmmakers to choose how they want to communicate with the public via the internet, as witness his King Kong online series. I’m already hoping that Ian McKellen will start another of his online diaries once he becomes actively involved in the filming. “The Grey Book II,” perhaps!

Variety has announced that Guillermo Del Toro has signed a contract to direct both The Hobbit and its sequel, which will deal with the 60-year period between that film and The Lord of the Rings. Del Toro plans to be in New Zealand for the next four years.

The announcement was made this afternoon by New Line and MGM, which will be co-producing the films, and Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, who will be credited as executive producers. Warner Bros. will distribute the films in the US and MGM in the rest of the world.

Apparently the delays are over, and we can expect the film to go into pre-production very soon!

As I anticipated, during my three-week absence in Egypt, a major development took place in the saga of attempts to get the two Hobbit films underway. Better late than never, though, and anyway, no one in the media seems to have noticed this development. No, I’m not talking about the mysterious riddle that Guillermo Del Toro posted on Friday night on the Hellboy II website. Apparently we are soon to get definite good news that Del Toro will officially be directing the two films, though it remains murky as to exactly when this will happen.

For a long time, though, we’ve heard nothing about the Tolkien Trust’s lawsuit against New Line Cinema over the percentage of gross revenues from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy allegedly owed to the Tolkien heirs. On February 18, I posted an extensive entry analyzing the original complaint in that case, filed on February 11. more »

I returned from Egypt yesterday and have been sifting through heaps of snail- and e-mail today. To my surprise, there have been no dramatic developments in the New Line and Hobbit-project situations, though the latter seems to be inching toward being officially underway.

I still need to do more catching up, so I’ll just start by alerting fans to today’s brand-new posting on Ian McKellen’s website. One of the items I found in my in-box was a note from Keith Stern, Ian’s webmaster, who kindly put my on his mailing list. There Keith writes, “After a year-long intermission while he was touring the world as King Lear, Sir Ian McKellen has returned to his blog.” That’s good news, since he has dropped some tidbits of information about the two Hobbit films. (With luck, he’ll soon be writing a sequel of his own, The Grey Book 2.) more »