The Frodo Franchise by Kristin Thompson
 
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February 26 : 2010

MGM moving into second round of bidding

Bloomberg Business Week reports today that MGM has invited a second round of bids for its assets by mid-March. At the end of March, the suspension of interest payments on the studio’s $3.7 billion debt ends.

According to three anonymous sources, “Billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries, Time Warner Inc., Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and Liberty Media Corp. are among the potential buyers examining MGM books.” (Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. dropped out without bidding in the first round.)  The article goes on, “Suitors are trying to assess the value of MGM assets that include a 4,100-movie library, future “Bond” movies and rights to co-distribute films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit.’”

The first round of bids is non-binding pending due diligence. (That means the process whereby the potential bidders sign non-disclosure agreements and are allowed to examine MGM’s assets and debts in order to determine what they think it’s worth.) As that process has gone forward, MGM has invited bidders it considers serious to move into the second round of bidding.

As always, I caution fans that MGM’s problems probably have little to do with the delays (short so far) that have been occurring on the Hobbit film’s progress. Warner Bros. no doubt put all sorts of contingency clauses into its contract with MGM. Warner may acquire the Hobbit rights if Time Warner buys MGM. If some other company buys MGM, it will presumably be bound by that same contract.

(A tip of the pointy wizard hat to Compa Mighty on the Hobbit message boards at TORN for alerting us to this story.)

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    The Frodo Franchise
    by Kristin Thompson

    US flagbuy at best price

    Canadian flagbuy at best price

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    Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
    hardcover 978-0-520-24774-1
    421 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 12 color illustrations; 36 b/w illustrations; 1 map; 1 table

    “Once in a lifetime.”
    The phrase comes up over and over from the people who worked on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. The film’s 17 Oscars, record-setting earnings, huge fan base, and hundreds of ancillary products attest to its importance and to the fact that Rings is far more than a film. Its makers seized a crucial moment in Hollywood—the special effects digital revolution plus the rise of “infotainment” and the Internet—to satisfy the trilogy’s fans while fostering a huge new international audience. The resulting franchise of franchises has earned billions of dollars to date with no end in sight.

    Kristin Thompson interviewed 76 people to examine the movie’s scripting and design and the new technologies deployed to produce the films, video games, and DVDs. She demonstrates the impact Rings had on the companies that made it, on the fantasy genre, on New Zealand, and on independent cinema. In fast-paced, compulsively readable prose, she affirms Jackson’s Rings as one the most important films ever made.

    The Frodo Franchise

    cover of Penguin Books’ (NZ) edition of The Frodo Franchise, published September 2007. The tiny subtitle reads: “How ‘The Lord of the Rings’ became a Hollywood blockbuster and put New Zealand on the map.”