The Frodo Franchise by Kristin Thompson
 
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December 21 : 2008

Ian McKellen interview

TheOneRing.net alerts us to a new interview with Ian McKellen, online in the Independent on Sunday. Gandalf gets mentioned only in passing. It’s mainly about Shakespeare, in advance of the December 26 showing of King Lear on Channel 4 in the U.K.

It’s a very nice interview, with Ian saying some things about his Shakespearean roles on film that I hadn’t noticed in other interviews. But if I may bring in a personal note relating to The Frodo Franchise, the kitchen table described by the interviewer is the very place where we sat when I interviewed Ian in early 2005 for my book. Ian sat opposite the window, not in front of it, and it was snowing, not sunny, so we were not flooded with light. He drank coffee, not peppermint tea. The deck is on that level (one flight up), and I caught a glimpse of the bronze Weta Gandalf statue installed there. A lovely memory, one of the many highlights during the research on the book.

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    The Frodo Franchise
    by Kristin Thompson

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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.”