We all know that Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens are powerful filmmakers. Here I’m not talking about their creative abilities, which are obvious, but about their power within the film industry to go after projects that appeal to them personally. The Lord of the Rings (and Peter’s other films, as we’ll see below) gave them the financial clout to proceed without a studio attached. more »

Variety reports that bidding for MGM will begin within the next few weeks. The article has a good rundown on the situation: what companies own shares in MGM currently, what assets the studio has, how much it owes, which studios are likely to bid, and so on.

MGM is still considered to be a co-financer of The Hobbit, the rights to which are one of the studio’s major assets. The most salient part of the article is this:

Speculation has focused mostly on Time Warner Inc. as a likely bidder, since it has over than $9 billion in cash from the recent spinoff of its cable systems and would regain full control over “The Hobbit.” Time Warner also owns the pre-1985 MGM library through its 1996 buyout of Turner Broadcasting and made an eleventh-hour bid in 2004 for MGM but was topped by an investor group led by Sony.

Time Warner owns Warner Bros., which absorbed New Line after its financial problems began. New Line is a distinct production unit and will be in charge of making The Hobbit. Still, Warner is the other co-financer on the film, so the simplest solution as far as the production of the two films is concerned would probably be for Time Warner to acquire MGM. The prospect of News Corp. (which owns Twentieth Century Fox) buying MGM and coming in on the project boggles the mind just a bit.

[December 30: TheOneRing.net is now saying that there has actually been no casting call and will not be until February. I guess all this has the status of rumor right now.]

Apparently the previous announcement of Hobbit casting, despite having been posted on MGM’s website, was packed with misinformation. Jack, of The Noldor Blog, has some corrections and important new information.

Please note Jack’s emphasis on the fact that extras will need to be New Zealand citizens, permanent citizens, or people with long-term work permits. Do take that seriously if you don’t fall in one of those categories, because the filmmakers are constrained by labor laws.

Jack’s source says principal photography is to begin c. May or June.

The most important thing about the post as far as I’m concerned is that there is now an official company which has been formed to produce The Hobbit. It’s called 3 Foot 7, or Three Foot Seven. (I was never quite sure whether the LOTR production company was officially 3 Foot 6 or Three Foot Six.) To me, that implies that a greenlight has been given or is now just pro forma. The greenlight is what needs to happen before this production really gets going, and I hope we get an announcement of it soon.

[Jack has written to point out that he posted the name of the new production company (in yet a third version of how it’s written) back in June. So it’s not that new and not all that significant when it comes to guessing when a greenlight may come. Thanks, Jack!]

Jack M., a Wellingtonian who guides LOTR tours, writes on his blog that the ship used for King Kong is apparently soon to be disposed of. Rumor has it that the ship will be sunk in February, somewhere off the coast for the entertainment of divers.

For most people, that ship has nothing to do with the film trilogy. For me there are connections. On my first research visit to Wellington when I was preparing The Frodo Franchise, I arrived on Sunday, September 28, 2003, and on Tuesday, the 30th, took a taxi from downtown out to the Three Foot Six offices on the Miramar peninsula. There I had an appointment to do my very first interview. Cobham Drive, the road out to the peninsula, runs along the southern edge of Evans Bay, and across the water I could see a small green ship moored at the Miramar Wharf. (Cobham Drive and Evans Bay are on the map of the area that appears on p. 292 of the book; the wharf is there as well, north of the Three Foot Six building, though not named.) My driver informed me that it was a ship purchased for King Kong. I gather this was supposedly a secret, though obviously not a very well-kept one. more »

After a notable lack of information on Weta Digital’s part in creating the special effects in Avatar, there seems to be a flood of information coming out. Animation World Network has posted two pieces on the effects. One is an interview with James Cameron, “Cameron Geeks out on Avatar.” The other is “Avatar: The Game Changer.” The latter has quotations from Joe Letteri, the American special-effects expert who moved to Wellington after working on the LOTR film and now is a partner in Weta. As I point out all too frequently, this is relevant here because it demonstrates the impact that LOTR continues to have on the world of filmmaking.

[Thanks to Bill Desowitz for sending these links!]

Yesterday Anne Thompson posted a terrific interview with Joe Letteri on Indiewire. It’s done with flip cam in four parts, adding up to about 22 minutes.

Part 1, “Avatar advances,” has an excellent explanation of how Weta has developed motion capture from Gollum to Kong to  the Na’vi in Avatar. Part 2 is “Facial capture.” Part 3 doesn’t have a title, but it includes some interesting material on how Weta competed with other effects companies and managed to win the assignment of doing 95% of Avatar. Basically they specialized in character creation. Clearly they built on the technical success of Gollum and have become the go-to firm for complex facial expressions on digital characters. Part 4 is “The Eyes!”

There’s no mention of The Hobbit, but in Part 4 there’s a little discussion of how the Avatar technology has been used on the first Tintin film and will continue to be used on the second. It seems pretty likely that the technology will be handy for The Hobbit. Letteri says that some of the programs are proprietary, so I expect that, like Massive, these developments will result in some highly influential programs going on the market.

CGI has come a long way since the LOTR film trilogy came out, and its impact on present filmmaking is not as direct as it used to be. Still, LOTR launched the ongoing process that Letteri talks about in this interview. By the time LOTR was finished, industry commentators were saying that Weta Digital was one of the top three effects houses in the world. By now, I wouldn’t be surprised to see people calling it number one. As Anne says, it seems almost certain that, whatever other Oscars Avatar picks up, one for special effects will be heading for Wellington.

Remember how a system for selective digital grading was developed by Peter Doyle for the LOTR trilogy? (I talk about it in Chapter 9 of The Frodo Franchise and blogged about it here.) And remember how Peter Jackson was having live video conferencing between him in London and his special-effects team back in Wellington, all over the innovative secure internet connection they dubbed the Fatpipe? If you’ve forgotten, you’ll find short segments on those techniques in the extended-edition DVD supplements.

Those were incredibly cutting-edge technologies at that time. Now Variety reports that Technicolor has put the two together to allow filmmakers to sit in on and participate in color-grading sessions going on at a distant facility. It’s called “Technicolor Remote Grading.” The same footage is shown on 2K digital projectors in Technicolor offices that might be in Hollywood and London. According to Marco Barrio, VP of theatrical post-production for Technicolor Creative Services, “We have clients working with that colorist as if they’re sitting in the same room. The color matches, it’s in real time, and the quality is the same as if they were sitting in the same room with the colorist.”

Back in 2003 when I first interviewed Barrie Osborne, he said that the trilogy’s greatest impact on the film industry would be its use of digital intermediates (the version of the film used for color grading). I think it’s safe to say that this new technology’s origins could be trace back, directly or indirectly, to the innovations of the LOTR film. Quite possibly something of the sort will be used on The Hobbit.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has written a brief account of the critical reaction to Avatar. He’s surprised to find that there’s a backlash among some of the fanboys that one might expect to love the film, while critics for major news outlets are raving about it. Kind of a reversal of what one might expect. Douthat thinks the professional critics are deliberately brushing aside what he (and many others) perceive as problems with the plot and dialogue, enthusing about the film largely on the basis of its spectacular visuals. He points out that the best effects-heavy films have tights stories and good dialogue–and holds the LOTR trilogy up as one of those that new blockbusters should be measured against.

Nothing much to do with LOTR or The Hobbit, but Newsweek has just posted a double interview with Peter Jackson and James Cameron. The interviewer’s questions have been eliminated, so it reads as a conversation between the two of them. They have some interesting things to say about the current dominance of the blockbuster in Hollywood filmmaking and about CGI–how much it costs, how it will never replace actors, and how the story still rules. Cameron has some nice things to say about Gollum.

The interview will also be in the January 4 print issue.

Today Michael Fleming posted an interview with James Cameron on his Variety blog. Cameron has said in several interviews I’ve read that he decided to make Avatar because the creation of Gollum in the LOTR trilogy made him realize that CGI technology had evolved far enough to make his film possible. In this new interview, though, he praises the trilogy as a whole more enthusiastically than I have seen previously.

Variety is starting to put up a selective pay-wall, so in case you can’t get through to the interview, here’s the relevant passage (though the interview as a whole has some interesting things to say about the future of 3D):

When I see a movie that excites me visually, the feeling is extraordinary. I went to see `Lord of the Rings’ for entertainment, but you begin to think, is this something I can incorporate? That’s how this works and it goes in cycles. Peter Jackson inspired me with consummate filmmaking and the specificity of the CG that made me feel a doorway opening that enabled me to make `Avatar.’

Cameron is already talking about making two sequels to Avatar, and I would not be at all surprised if he once again chose Weta as his special-effects house.