Today The Hollywood Reporter posted a story by Borys Kit announcing that Disney has decided not to co-produce the next Chronicles of Narnia film with Walden Media. Kit speculates that Twentieth Century Fox may take over as Walden’s partner.

Kit also comments on the possibility that the fantasy vogue started by the Harry Potter and LOTR films may be waning:

It is rare for a studio to pull out of a planned trilogy in midstream, but the number-crunching showed a franchise on a downward trend. “Lion” roared to $292 million domestically and another $453 million internationally in 2005. This year, “Prince Caspian” grossed a healthy $141 million in North America and another $278 million internationally, but that was well off the “Lion” take.

Further challenging “Treader” may be a waning of the pricey children’s fantasy genre. When the “Harry Potter” series topped the book charts and then filled movie theaters, studios began snapping up fantasy manuscripts as quickly as they could. When “The Lord of the Rings” showed it was possible for adults to enjoy the fare as well — and produced the boxoffice results to prove it — Hollywood’s fascination with the genre intensified.

But no other fantasy adventure films have shown that kind of boxoffice punch. Earlier this year, Warners and New Line hoped they were launching a franchise with “The Golden Compass,” but the adaptation of the Philip Pullman trilogy tanked domestically.

The film grossed just $70 million domestically and the co-production partners declined to go forward with a second installment despite the fact the film did take in more than $300 million overseas.

Of course other fantasy adaptations have failed to launch franchises. Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and Eragon came and went without sequels.

In Chapter 9 of The Frodo Franchise, I wrote about the impact the LOTR film trilogy had on giving the fantasy genre both respectability and financial success. If Kit is right, that impact will have been short-lived. One test, I suppose, will be Inkheart, produced by New Line and announced for January 23, 2009. If that flops, studios will be even less willing to take a chance on fantasies.

One obvious problem is that these films tend to cost a lot, given the special effects involved. If a film has a $200 million budget (not counting marketing), a $370 million worldwide gross doesn’t seem that impressive. After all, half or less of that comes back to the studio. (Far less than half in the case of The Golden Compass, which New Line financed in part by selling off the foreign distribution rights.)

There’s no one answer as to why attempts to imitate the success of HP and LOTR have fizzled. In some cases the original literary work isn’t strong—but that’s hardly the case with the Narnia and His Dark Materials books. Both the HP and LOTR film series have benefited from having continuing stories, while the Narnia books are fairly self-contained—but that’s not true of The Golden Compass, despite the film’s attempt to downplay the cliff-hanger ending of the first book. Then there’s the issue of the film’s quality. I’ve never read Eragon, but I found the movie pretty flat.

Peter Jackson’s team, New Line, and we are all very fortunate that there’s more Tolkien available to extend their fantasy franchise. Making the fairly safe assumption that The Hobbit is a big success, I wonder if studios will begin the whole process of imitation again. And there are three more HP films to dangle the vision of fantasy-fueled box-office riches before the studios.

TheOneRing.net alerts us to a new interview with Ian McKellen, online in the Independent on Sunday. Gandalf gets mentioned only in passing. It’s mainly about Shakespeare, in advance of the December 26 showing of King Lear on Channel 4 in the U.K.

It’s a very nice interview, with Ian saying some things about his Shakespearean roles on film that I hadn’t noticed in other interviews. But if I may bring in a personal note relating to The Frodo Franchise, the kitchen table described by the interviewer is the very place where we sat when I interviewed Ian in early 2005 for my book. Ian sat opposite the window, not in front of it, and it was snowing, not sunny, so we were not flooded with light. He drank coffee, not peppermint tea. The deck is on that level (one flight up), and I caught a glimpse of the bronze Weta Gandalf statue installed there. A lovely memory, one of the many highlights during the research on the book.

My husband just pointed me to an article I had missed when it first appeared: “Inside the Making of the Eragon Movie,” by Paul Hyman. It was originally from The Hollywood Reporter and was posted on BusinessWeek on September 12, 2006. more »

Recently I linked to news of my interview on “Fictional Frontiers with Sohaib” and more recently to the online podcast version. Now there’s a transcript of the interview, kindly done by Deleece Cook, posted on TheOneRing.net. Thanks to all involved!

TheOneRing.net has alerted us to “rumors” concerning a delay in the release of The Hobbit flooding the Internet. Actually it all seems to be one rumor, endlessly reprinted or paraphrased. So far, I don’t see any reason whatsoever to believe it. more »

It’s been just over ten months since the February announcement that Time Warner was folding New Line Cinema into its main film-production wing, Warner Bros. That happened very quickly, and a large majority of the New Line staff got laid off, including bosses Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne. I blogged about it here and here.

Since then I’ve been thinking about the irony of the fact that most of New Line’s films this year (all conceived and finished or put into production under the old, independent New Line) have been quite successful. It had three films go over $100 million in domestic box-office grosses: Sex and the City, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and now Four Christmases. Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay grossed less—but it cost a lot less to make, so it was a success. Only Pride and Glory has been a disappointment. I had vague thoughts of blogging on the subject.

Now I don’t have to, because it turns out that Patrick Goldstein, of the Los Angeles Times, has been thinking along the same lines. He’s written a piece, “Back from the Dead, Hollywood Style.” Take a look at the comments, too. It sounds as though Warner Bros. may have spent more than necessary to market these pics, thereby losing some of the cost savings supposedly accruing from the New Line absorption.

Goldstein seems to have some sort of special relationship with Bob Shaye. He published a very useful interview with Bob Shaye on December 11, 2001, just before The Fellowship of the Ring came out. (Unfortunately the LA Times online doesn’t go back that far.) It was very helpful when I was writing The Frodo Franchise, and I quoted it several times. Goldstein has written quite a bit on New Line and Shaye since then, so he may be a bit partial to the studio. Still, it remains to be seen whether the films New Line has put into production since February will be as successful as these leftovers from the previous regime.

In July I had the pleasure of meeting Sohaib Awan at Comic-Con. He’s the host of “Fictional Frontiers,” an interview show on radio station WNJC-1360 AM in Philadelphia. I’m sure many of you have listened to Sohaib’s interviews with some of the folks from TheOneRing.net over the past few months.

Now it’s my turn. I’ll be one of the interviewees this coming Sunday, December 14, talking about The Frodo Franchise and the LOTR film trilogy. You can hear it on the show’s website. Just click the “listen now” button at the upper right. The program starts at 11:00 EST and runs for an hour. I hope you enjoy it!

If you miss the interview, Sohaib assures me that it should be posted as a podcast within a few days after it airs. I’ll post a link to that when it happens.

On my recent trip to Jordan, one of the books I took along to read was Melissa Anelli’s new title, Harry: A History. The cover describes is as “The true story of a boy wizard, his fans, and life inside the Harry Potter phenomenon.” It’s one of those books that’s ideal for traveling: a lot of prose in small print packed into a light-weight, compact volume.

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Yesterday Ain’t It Cool News posted an interview with Viggo Mortensen done by Capone. A lot of it has to do with Mortensen’s upcoming film, The Road. Naturally, however, talk does turn to The Hobbit and more specifically Film 2. As he points out, Aragorn isn’t in The Hobbit, but he might well be in Film 2. Mortensen then reveals that a scene from Appendix A of LOTR was actually shot and describes it in some detail:

They would do that, using what they legally have the right to, which I assume are the appendices of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. I don’t think they have the right to take whatever they want from the SILMARILLION, for example, but they could take from the appendices.

For example, we shot a sequence, Liv Tyler and I, and it’s in Lorien, and we’re walking around, and it’s when I’m still…you know, I’m wearing clothes that are more like something you’d see Legolas wearing. I have no beard. I have really long hair, and it’s partly in a braid. And, I’m wearing definitely elvish kind of clothing. I look like some young elvish lord. And, I think, I’m barefoot, walking in these flowers with her. And, we’re in that courtship period, you know, and because of our aging thing, we look similar. I look a little younger than usual, the no beard helps and all that.

And, it’s a memory, right, and it was meant to be used as one of those moments where I’m remembering something about her. They didn’t use it. So, they could use that, and then they could shoot other things in that vein. I don’t know, they could make up a certain amount of things that would be in the spirit of Tolkien, I have no doubt. People ask me about it a lot, and I say, obviously, “Nobody’s come to me,” but I won’t be surprised if they do, if I’m right for it in their eyes. Obviously, as an actor who originated on film that role, I’d rather finish the job, all things being equal, meaning, Is it a good script, and do they have their shit together, than see another actor do it.

Maybe the news of that scene’s existence has already gotten out, but if so, I haven’t run across it.

Even if Film 2 isn’t made or doesn’t have Aragorn in it, it’s fascinating to know that that whole scene apparently exists. Peter Jackson has said that he’ll never edit additional scenes into the trilogy to create an extended extended version. He has said, however, that he could imagine a DVD of the film that included unused scenes as bonuses.

So, maybe one way or another, we’ll get to see that scene someday!