I was alerted by Magpie over on the Message Boards of TheOneRing.net that Doug Adams has revamped his blog site in preparation for the publication of his long-awaited book on the music in the LOTR trilogy. Have a look here. Doug specifies that his book will come out this fall. Even those who don’t want to read close analysis of the musical tracks may want to buy the book anyway to get the accompanying CD (which I gather won’t be sold separately). It contains: “unused, alternate, and early-draft music from FOTR, TTT, and ROTK … and even a little discussion with Howard Shore and myself.” Doug has long had access to Shore for interviews, and there’s no one better qualified than he to create the definitive book on the subject: The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films.

I know a lot of us are eagerly looking forward to seeing this book at last. Some of the delays have been due to the formidable challenges of putting together an elaborate publication like this.

Doug has been very mysterious about the publisher. I’m curious, since of course this is a late entry in the continuing LOTR franchise, which this blog in part exists to update. Is this one of the official tie-in books licensed by New Line? Or is it an independent book that had isn’t licensed but has had to pay for the individual rights to reproduce the various musical notations, illustrations, and other material from the films? I’ll of course post a notice when the book becomes available, but in the meantime, you can follow Doug’s blog, which contains a link to his Twitter page.

It has been nearly six years since the release of The Return of the King, but its international distributors still look back on the three years of the trilogy’s distribution as one of their most lucrative periods ever.

As I explained in Chapter 9 of The Frodo Franchise, LOTR was technically an independent film, produced by New Line, then an independent company. It was financed in the traditional indie way, through sales of distribution rights to independent distributors abroad and through licensing fees for the tie-in products. Although those distributors had to pay hefty fees up front, before the film had even been made, and although they were naturally nervous about the prospects for success, they ended up happy and rich.

Indeed, New Line was the biggest supplier for many of these independent distributors. When it got absorbed into Warner Bros. early last year, that source of supply dried up. About a year ago, I wrote an entry on “Observations on Film Art,” discussing the companies that were possibly stepping in to take New Line’s place. Among the companies I mentioned was a relative newcomer to the American distribution scene, Summit Entertainment. At that point Summit had only released a few insignificant films in the US, though it had been producing films since the mid-1990s. Its main claim to fame was a long and successful track record for selling American movies to distributors abroad.

Summit’s producing efforts got a big boost in 2006. Paramount famously put Twilight into turnaround early in the year, and in October a producer brought it to Summit. (For a good background account, see this LA Times story.) In late 2008, Twilight was slipped into the original November 21 slot that had been announced for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Although it wasn’t as immediately successful as the second entry in the series has been, it built into a hit. After less than two weeks in distribution, The Twilight Saga: New Moon has made an estimated $230 million domestically and is a big hit abroad as well.

Mike Goodridge, the editor of Screen Daily, has pointed out that the Twilight phenomenon is in some ways parallel to that of the Rings trilogy:

When New Line Cinema was absorbed into Warner Bros in early 2008, many of the world’s leading independent distributors lost one of their key suppliers of Hollywood-level product. Companies such as Entertainment in the UK and Metropolitan in France had gone through good times and bad with New Line over the years, but when they were good, as in the case of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, they were very, very good.

Goodridge cites some figures to back this up:

Seeing E1 Films in the UK take nearly $20m in the UK, SND in France scoring $17m, Eagle in Italy $14.3m and Aurum in Spain $13.7m last weekend brought back the heady days of The Lord Of The Rings openings. In Australia, Hoyts Distribution brought in $13.3m for the biggest opening ever in the territory. In New Zealand as well, it took the all-time crown, the $1.9m gross beating, you guessed it, The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King.

Aurum, by the way, only exists today because of its success with the trilogy.

In my book, I suggested that LOTR, despite being a blockbuster, was enormously beneficial to international independent and foreign-language cinema. Now the Twilight series looks like it will have a similar, sustained effect. According to Goodridge:

What The Lord Of The Rings proved and the Twilight Saga reaffirms is that this kind of independent success is good for everybody. The Twilight distributors will have more money to invest in financing and acquisitions, benefiting other independent productions, while sales companies struggling to get films off the ground in a turgid distribution world will hopefully encounter a renewed buoyancy in the international markets.

The parallel is even stronger if we recall that LOTR was picked up by New Line when it was put into turnaround by Miramax.

The Hobbit will extend the franchise, but it won’t bring the same benefit to foreign distributors. New Line no longer handles its own financing or distribution. Warner Bros. will finance the film (perhaps with help from MGM if that studio manages to survive and put its economic affairs in order) and will distribute the film. There will presumably be no presales to independent distributors abroad.

There’s presumably no causal connection between the trilogy and the parallel Twilight phenomenon. Still, it’s good to see a similar windfall going to independent cinema around the world.

I have to admit that I’ve never sat through the last part of the credits on the LOTR extended-edition DVDs. That’s the section where all the charter members of the official fan club had their names listed–including such notables as Elijah Wood. It takes 20 minutes for all those names to scroll by. I don’t know how many names there are, either, but there are a lot of people out there happy to have their names linked with the trilogy.

You’d think more studios would have done the same sort of thing with their DVDs, but it turns out that they haven’t–until now. Given how important online fans were to getting Paranormal Activity a theatrical release, Paramount announced that all fans who signed up at the film’s official website by November 9 would have their names  included at the end of the DVD. I’m not sure how long before November 9 the announcement was made. Stories hit the news media around November 5, as in this story in on Video Business.

The story compares Paramount’s offer to the LOTR one. For the epic LOTR, the 20 minutes was a relatively small section to add onto the end. For Paranormal Activity, which runs a mere 86-minutes, a long roll of fan names could be a big chunk of the DVD’s length.

More evidence that, although we’re coming up on the sixth anniversary of the release of the third part of the trilogy, the influence of LOTR doesn’t quit!

Yesterday Variety posted a story, “Pros pick best places for filmmaking.” A few years ago, it was almost a given that New Zealand would be on the list. I was surprised and a bit disappointed not to see it there. Naturally for cities, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York, and some others were chosen. The foreign choices included Morocco for deserts. Fair enough, there aren’t any really extensive sand deserts in New Zealand. Further afield, Madrid, Barcelona, and the Canary Islands are favorites for their coastlines, high mountains, deserts scenery, and architecturally interesting cities. That’s where I guess I’d expect New Zealand to be most competitive.

For “Best Production Resources,” Sydney, Toronto, and Montreal were picked. (I briefly described Fox Studios Australia, the biggest Sydney facility, on pages 337-8 in The Frodo Franchise.)

Without new Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia releases to display the beauties of the country’s landscapes, perhaps the thought of filming there has faded from filmmakers’ memories. True, huge productions have been based partly in the Wellington facilities built by Peter Jackson and his partners, but they’ve been using Weta Digital’s highly sophisticated special-effects capabilities: Avatar and Steven Spielberg’s Tintin movie. Between those and The Lovely Bones (which was partly shot in Pennsylvania), Weta is not in a position to take on every job offered. Besides, the Cameron and Spielberg films presumably won’t show off the New Zealand landscape much, if at all.

Perhaps The Hobbit will remind filmmakers why a few years ago everyone was aspiring to shoot in New Zealand.

[Nov 5: Variety has a brief story about how U.S. films are not shooting in Australia as much as they used to. The author notes that New Zealand is doing better, but the three titles mentioned--Tintin, Lovely Bones, District 9--are all Peter Jackson-produced items.]

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 »

I’ve been working to a deadline on the revision of David’s and my textbook, Film Art: An Introduction. That has gone to the press now, though, so I can catch up on blogging. One item that has been sitting on my desk is Ted Turner’s 2008 autobiography, Call Me Ted.

To refresh your memory concerning Turner’s involvement with The Lord of the Rings, it arose from the fact that in 1994 his company, Turner Broadcasting System, bought New Line Cinema. In turn Turner Broadcasting System was bought by Time Warner in 1996. At that point, Miramax was negotiating with Saul Zaentz to acquire production rights to LOTR for Peter Jackson to direct. New Line eventually bought those rights from Miramax in the summer of 1998. more »

Yesterday Variety announced that Mike Mulvihill, who produced the lavish supplements for the extended-version editions of the LOTR DVDs, is leaving New Line and moving to Fox Home Entertainment. As I described in Chapter 7 of The Frodo Franchise, Mulvihill hired producer-director Michael Pellerin to make the supplements. Now he’ll be senior vice president of global content development for Fox. Not surprisingly, he’ll concentrate on developing bonus features for DVD and Blu-ray releases.

Mulvihill had been at New Line for 14 years, so well back into the days of VHS.  Last April, Variety ran another story profiling him and saying that his future at New Line “remains murky” after the studio was merged into Warner Bros. One of the departments that disappeared from New Line was its home entertainment wing. Now Mulvihill’s future is no longer murky.

Will this have any impact on the Hobbit supplements? Michael made the DVD supplements for King Kong, even though that was produced by Universal, not New Line. My hope and guess would be that, like to many members of Peter’s team, Michael has become a regular collaborator and will probably make the Hobbit supplements as well.

Last August I reported that Dr. Ruth Harley, who had been the head of the New Zealand Film Commission, had moved over to direct the newly re-organized Screen Australia. Those are the parallel agencies that help fund local films in their respective countries.

I interviewed Ruth twice for The Frodo Franchise and got invaluable information on the impact of LOTR on the local film industry.

Now the Australian newspaper The Age has talked with Ruth about her approach to building up the lagging local production. It seems apparent that she will do much the same as what she did in New Zealand: urge filmmakers to consider what kinds of films theater owners would like to book in order to make money. As the author points out, the most successful New Zealand films now outperform those from Australia, proportionate to their relative populations. “Buoyed by a string of internationally acclaimed and financially successful films, most famously Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, New Zealand now supports a thriving domestic and offshore film industry.”

The article goes on, quoting Ruth: “Offshore production allowed New Zealand to build skills and infrastructure. These days, she says, Peter Jackson needs local producers to use the studio and post-production facilities he developed for the Lord of the Rings films – ‘and boy do the locals want to work with his talent and machine’.”

Even five years after the third part of the trilogy appeared, LOTR continues to influence the domestic industry of New Zealand–and now perhaps, in a less direct way, Australia as well.

Variety announced today that Gordon Paddison has started a new company and that Peter Jackson has signed a deal with it.

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.]