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.

I’ve been reading a lot of articles on Avatar and interviews with James Cameron recently. Of course, there’s so much coverage that I couldn’t possibly get through all of it. But on the whole I was disappointed at how little information there was on Weta Ltd.’s role in the film’s groundbreaking special effects.

The Hollywood Reporter’s article by Alex Ben Block, posted December 10 and published in the December 11 print edition, is the big exception. It doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty details of the technology involved, but it gives the facts and figures to show just how much Cameron’s film relied on Weta to innovate the new techniques and to slog through the laborious process of rendering a huge number of effects shots. Here’s the section of the article on Weta: more »

Yesterday the New York Times posted a story about the huge budget of James Cameron’s upcoming Avatar. Michael Cieply breaks down the budget, explaining how Twentieth Century Fox managed to spread the risk around and how Cameron himself has to put off his share of the film’s income until the studio recoups its costs. The estimate of the budget given in the story if $500 million, rather than the $230 million being used by the studio in publicity. That doesn’t count prints and advertising. The publicity budget alone is about $150 million.

Can a film possibly make a profit with such costs? Titanic took in about $1.8 billion worldwide, far ahead of any competitor. The Return of the King, still the number 2 international earner, took in $1.119 billion. Avatar has the advantage of going out on an estimate 2500 3D screens in the US, and perhaps as many 2D screens. 3D ticket prices are around 30% higher, so the film has that advantage. But a film has to take in at the box office over twice its costs just to break even. I suspect this will be a picture that makes its money in the DVD sales and other ancillaries.

I mention all this because a lot of that big budget has been spent at Weta. Although the film was shot in Los Angeles, its considerable number of digital effects have been done by the Wellington company, which is still working on finishing it up. I don’t know what portion of the half-billion-dollar budget was spent within New Zealand, but I would bet that it’s substantial. If there was any doubt back in the days of the trilogy and of King Kong that Weta would prosper, it has been resolved quite unequivocally.

Avatar has benefited from the Large Budget Screen Production Grant, which was created by the New Zealand government in 2003 to encourage producers from other countries to make their films at least partly in the country. (See Chapter 10 of The Frodo Franchise.) At that point the rebate was 12.5%. Now it’s up to 15%, to better compete with similar incentives in other countries. Without it, Avatar would have cost even more.

Whether Avatar makes money, loses it, or breaks even for Fox, it has been a great boon for Weta Digital and presumably leaves it in healthy shape going into the making of The Hobbit.

(I should mention that Titanic, RotK, and other modern rec0rd-holders are at the top of the list mainly because the figures have not been adjusted for inflation. When inflation is taken into account, older films like Gone with the Wind are still the box-office champs, at least in the domestic US market.)

The Hollywood Reporter has chosen Peter Jackson and his close associates as “Producers of the Year.” The magazine takes the occasion to publish a long summary of Peter’s career. There’s a lot on The Lovely Bones and District 9, with little mention of The Hobbit. Still, it’s a nice summary with some new quotations from Peter, Neill Blomkamp, and Ken Kamins (long-time agent for Peter and Fran Walsh and now a co-producer on their projects), among others. It pulls together a lot of material.

There are also links to shorter items on Weta’s rise to prominence among effects houses, the growth in the New Zealand film industry as a result of LOTR, and a timeline for Peter’s life. Take note that in the latter there’s a mistake. The deal between Peter and New Line to make the trilogy came in August, 1998, not January. In January the project was still at Miramax, in the midst of preproduction for a two-film version. It didn’t get put into turnaround until June, and soon Peter’s famous pitch to New Line’s Bob Shaye happened. Negotiations began, and the papers were signed in August.  See Chapter 1 of The Frodo Franchise for a rundown on the production history. (I’ve sent a message to the HR, so maybe the correct date will be substituted.)

stuff.co.nz, a New Zealand new aggregator, has published a brief but fascinating little story on Peter Jackson. While the rest of us are pointing out how incredibly successful Peter has been in carrying through on his ambitious plans, he’s apparently worrying about failing. The story quotes him:

“You’re always imagining the best, and then you always have to compromise for what you get in the real world,” Jackson said.

“It’s a process of constant disappointment. But somehow you have to hope that you set your goals high enough that even with the disappointment, you still end up with something that other people enjoy.”

I’m not sure that adds up to being “driven by fear of failure,” as the headline rather melodramatically puts it. I think anyone who’s had even a moderate degree of success fears failure.

Still, Peter has more reason to worry than most of us, since a great deal is riding on his continued success. Among the companies that Peter owns or co-owns–WingNut, Park Road Post, and Weta Ltd.–there are hundreds of employees. Thousands at the height of a big production, and the filmmaking infrastructure in Wellington seems always to be hard at work on a big production these days. Peter and his partners feel an enormous responsibility to those employees, and a big flop would affect many of them.

Along the way, the stuff.co article also mentions that Peter “has just finished the screenplay for the Hobbit film.” More confirmation that the script–and that would be for the first half of the two-part film–is finished. Now it’s presumably in the process of being budgeted and greenlighted. A film not likely to flop.

I doubt The Lovely Bones will fail, either. For a start, the trailer looks pretty good to me. Plus, now that Martin Scorsese’sShutter Island (originally October 2, now February 19) has been put back to the spring, Paramount has only two films due for release in the fourth quarter, Up in the Air, a George Clooney film gaining Oscar buzz (exact release date not announced) and The Lovely Bones (December 11). That will almost certainly lead the studio to concentrate on publicizing these two and pushing them for Oscar noms.

Thanks to fan and fellow blogger Ryan Rasmussen for alerting me to this story! You can find his blog, currently featuring a review of District 9 and multiple entries on his recent trip to New Zealand (with some beautiful photos) here.

Ever since Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp previewed District 9 at Comic-Con, the film has received an enormous amount of publicity. It’s had some impressive reviews as well, from professional critics as well as fanboys and girls.

Variety’s reviewer admired it, and yesterday the magazine ran an interview with Blomkamp and a brief article on its cinematographer, Trent Opalach. more »

Today the Wall Street Journal posted a lengthy summary of Peter Jackson’s filmmaking facilities in Wellington and his multifarious recent projects as producer and director. Not a lot of it will be news to fans who have been keeping up all along since the LOTR trilogy’s production. Still, both PJ and his former agent, now fellow producer Ken Kamins provided some interesting quotations for the story.

Peter remarks concerning The Hobbit, “In some respects, I’m still not sure if I made the right decision in not directing, because I’m enjoying it so much.” Ken says of Peter’s lawsuit against New Line Cinema, “This was purely a business dispute. Once it was resolved, everyone was happy to proceed with an ongoing creative relationship.”

Bonnie Eskenazi, one of the main lawyers for the Tolkien Trust in its current lawsuit against New Line over money allegedly owed for the trilogy, has this to say: “This lawsuit has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the the films. It has to do with the money.” She is perhaps responding to some fans’ apparent belief that the lawsuit is at least in part some sort of revenge on the part of some members of the Tolkien family for what they see as a poor adaptation–possibly even an attempt to shut down the production of The Hobbit. I think Ms Eskenazi’s statement is most likely true: this is a matter of money, and lots of it.

The article also contains the first statement concerning the lawsuit that I have seen from Peter: “I can only assume that whatever the result is, it will allow the film to get made and completed.”

Finally, PJ also reverted to the idea that while Guillermo del Toro is directing The Hobbit, he might return to his roots as a filmmaker. District 9 “has got me itching. Maybe I should find a little low-budget horror movie that I can just be making in the meantime.” Given that the filmmaking enterprises that he and his partners created are now highly successful and don’t depend on Peter’s own big projects to keep them supplied with business, there would be nothing to prevent that. As I pointed out here recently, his ambitious plans, many announced in the early autumn of 2006, have started coming to fruition in a big way.

(Thanks to loyal reader David Platt for calling my attention to the WSJ story.)

District 9, which will be released in the U.S. on August 14, has been attracting a lot of attention recently. As most of you undoubtedly already know, it’s a horror film produced by Peter Jackson and directed by South African Neil Blomkamp. Yesterday Variety posted a favorable review. I spotted a number of my interviewees for The Frodo Franchise among the credits.

I don’t do a lot of coverage of Peter’s non-LOTR, non-Hobbit projects on this blog, but it did strike me that District 9 marks something of a turning point in the ongoing saga of the trilogy’s impact. more »

Today’s New Zealand Herald has a fascinating story about Weta Digital’s expanding research department and some innovative work being done with facial expression and movement. Some of this new technology is being used on James Cameron’s Avatar, but I suspect it will be used for The Hobbit as well.

TheOneRing.net has alerted us to a story in the New Zealand Herald online: “Jackson’s jet set upgrade.” The story starts out being about the rumor that PJ is buying a new private jet to upgrade from his old one. I was more interested in the rest of the story, however, since it sums up Peter’s ownings–houses and production firms–and his estimated net worth. It gives figures on things I didn’t know about, including a claim that his income from the trilogy was in the region of “at least $220 million.” more »