Back on December 16, I wrote a short entry on “The Irony of New Line’s Success.” At that point I was linking to a Patrick Goldstein story in the Los Angeles Times online. Now Dave McNary offers more indication of that irony, plus some interesting new information, on Variety’s website. more »

Variety just announced that Twentieth Century Fox has taken over co-financing of the Chronicles of Narnia series a month after Disney decided to opt out of it. Fox had originally gone after the production rights to C. S. Lewis’ fantasy novels but had lost out to Walden. The Fox deal was not unexpected, since the two companies share a marketing and distribution firm, Fox Walden. As the article puts it, “The Century City studio [i.e., Fox] seems to be an ideal fit for the ‘Narnia’ books given that it’s been looking for a family-friendly, lit-based franchise for years–Fox 2000’s ‘Eragon’ filed to catch on with audiences and died after one installment.”

After The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was a huge hit at $745 million internationally, Prince Caspian‘s take of $419 million was considered enough of a decline for Disney to drop the series, especially since Caspian cost about $215 million to produce. Even so, it was the number 10 grosser internationally last year. The third film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (referred to only as Dawn Treader in the article), is planned to cost a relatively modest $140 million.

Negotiations about scripting are still going on, but Fox and Walden hope to get the film into principal photography by the end of this summer and out for the holiday season at the end of 2010. The director will be Michael Apted, with Mark Johnson (an old friend and one of my interviewees for The Frodo Franchise) and Andrew Adamson (director of the first two films in the series) as producers. Apparently Australia is being considered as the location for the bulk of the filming.

After the post-LOTR failures of a number of big-budget fantasy franchises, it’s good to see that this one will survive, at least for a while.

Loyal reader Paulo Pereira has alerted me to the fact that Empire magazine has big coverage of The Hobbit in its March issue. Check the image of Gollum on the cover here. It sounds from the online description that anyone who has been keeping up on TheOneRing.net, here, and on other specialist sites will be familiar with quite a bit of what’s in this issue. Still, there’s a new interview with Guillermo Del Toro, and he usually manages to drop in a few new facts. The announcement says the issue will be in stores on Friday, January 30. That’s presumably for the U.K. I don’t know if it comes out on the same day in North America, but I for one will be checking.

Nearly three years to go before the release, but I guess we can all start our collections of Hobbit-related magazines now. I’ve added a new category to deal with them: “The Hobbit in the Media.”

Variety reports today that the main casting for the first of the three planned Tintin films is set. I hadn’t seen a title given up to this point, but it’s given there as The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn. I had already posted the information that Simon Pegg, Nick Frost (both of Shaun of the Dead fame), and Andy Serkis had been cast. Now it has been announced that Jamie Bell (who played Billie Elliot) will be Tintin and Daniel Craig will co-star as Red Rackham. (Craig previously worked with Spielberg on Munich.)

The distribution is also set. Paramount will release the film in the U.S., other English-speaking territories, and Asia (excepting India). Sony Pictures Releasing International will distribute it in continental Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America, India, and other territories.

Peter Jackson is co-producing and is still set to direct the second Tintin film.

When the Oscar nominations were announced on Thursday, I suspect many of us felt a little nostalgic twinge for those palmy days five (!) years ago when The Return of the King was heading for its grand sweep of the awards.

Not everyone reads all the nominees in the categories beyond best picture, actors, director, animated feature, and maybe screenplay. But as a film historian, I scour the whole list. And apart from wanting to keep up, David and I also know a few people in the industry. Our friend James Shamus produced Milk, for example, and we were glad to see that he’ll have to put on his tux again.

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TheOneRing.net has alerted us to a brief story on MTV.com with quotations from Guillermo Del Toro on what’s happening with the Hobbit project. There’s not a lot of news in it. Basically he says that scripting is still going on, which we knew, and that a short list of actors for Bilbo exists, but none of them has been contacted, which we also pretty much knew. John Howe and Alan Lee (misidentified in the piece as “Adam Lee”) are already working on sketches and designs, and Mike Mignola, who worked with GDT on the Hellboy films and Pan’s Labyrinth, will be collaborating on designs. Perhaps most significantly, there’s an indication of timing given. The story quotes GDT as saying, ‘In about two, three months we’re going to full-on have more designers come on … from outside Weta. But we are already about a good third of the road [along] with some of the creatures–some really interesting and strong designs.” Signs of progress!

Over the holidays I finally found time to read John Howe’s new book, Forging Dragons: Inspirations, Approaches and Techniques for Drawing and Painting Dragons, which was published in October by Impact. (Amazon.com offers it in hardback here and paperback here; Amazon UK’s hardback is here and paperback here; and not to forget John’s country of origin, Amazon Canada’s hardback is here and paperback here.) Given that John will almost certainly be involved in designing Smaug for The Hobbit, the timing is felicitous. more »

Yesterday a Variety story on the Sundance Film Festival included a paragraph on Mark Ordesky, who produced The Lord of the Rings film trilogy for New Line Cinema. The story describes him as “Mark Ordesky, the former New Line Cinema/Fine Line Features exec who now has a production company, Amber Entertainment.” This is the first I’ve heard of Ordesky’s departure from New Line, and there’s no indication when it happened.

Ordesky was a crucial figure in the dealings between Peter Jackson’s team and the executives at New Line. He helped Peter maintain a considerable degree of control over the trilogy and get the film made the way he wanted it. I had hoped that Ordesky would play the same role on The Hobbit and “Film 2.” I don’t know what this new company of his entails, so possibly he might still produce a free-lance basis. If not, it will be interesting to see whom New Line taps to act as producer.

[Added January 23: I see that this post has occasioned a discussion on the forums at TheOneRing.net. The comments there show that there is still a lot of affection felt for Mark, as well as gratitude for his part in bringing the LOTR trilogy to fruition. As for Amber Entertainment, I googled it and found a website under construction. Another company of the same name in Texas is not related, I assume.]

Ben Fritz, who covers video games for Variety, has posted a review of Electronic Arts latest film-based LOTR title, “Lord of the Rings: Conquest.” He suggests that this entry in the series doesn’t live up to the earlier, acclaimed games that were coming out alongside the trilogy and shortly after the last film was released. (See Chapter 8 of The Frodo Franchise for a history of those games.) Apparently none of the original actors contributed their voices to “Conquest.” EA still holds an option for more film-based games, so perhaps this particular one will prove a mere bump in the road.

I learn from TheOneRing.net that some new photos have been posted on the “trilogytrail” page of Glenorchy Air’s website. They show the Edoras set on Mount Sunday under construction. Andrew Rutherford posted them and credits “a third party” for them. Readers of The Frodo Franchise may recall that I interviewed Janet and Robert Rutherford, the founders and owners of Glenorchy Air, which was involved in flying cast, crew, and equipment into some of the more remote locations on the South Island. They still operate the trilogytrail tour, which flies people over the spectacular mountains of that area, stopping at some of the shooting locations. There are eleven photos, guaranteed to arouse nostalgic feeling in Rings fans.