The Frodo Franchise by Kristin Thompson
 

Archive for the 'THE FRODO FRANCHISE in the Media' Category

December 11 : 2008

“Fictional Frontiers” will interview me this Sunday

In July I had the pleasure of meeting Sohaib Awan at Comic-Con. He’s the host of “Fictional Frontiers,” an interview show on radio station WNJC-1360 AM in Philadelphia. I’m sure many of you have listened to Sohaib’s interviews with some of the folks from TheOneRing.net over the past few months.

Now it’s my turn. I’ll be one of the interviewees this coming Sunday, December 14, talking about The Frodo Franchise and the LOTR film trilogy. You can hear it on the show’s website. Just click the “listen now” button at the upper right. The program starts at 11:00 EST and runs for an hour. I hope you enjoy it!

If you miss the interview, Sohaib assures me that it should be posted as a podcast within a few days after it airs. I’ll post a link to that when it happens.

September 30 : 2007

Online radio interview by Jim Freund, WBAI, New York City

I’ve just returned from my trip to New York, where I got together with Rick Porras, co-producer of LOTR, for a chat about his work on the trilogy, followed by a signing. That went very well, and we had some enthusiastic fans who asked many interesting questions. I’ll put together a report on that as soon as I’ve had a chance to go through my photos and my audio recording of the dialogue and the Q&A.

In the meantime, after much emailing back and forth, I managed to arrange a radio interview with Jim Freund of WBAI. He has long been the host of a sci-fi and fantasy program, “Hour of the Wolf,” which airs early on Saturday morning. more »

September 11 : 2007

Radio interview this Friday on Urbana/Champaign NPR [Now online]

I’ll be interviewed this Friday, September 14, on WILL Radio’s “The Afternoon Magazine” (am 580). That’s the National Public Radio affiliate in Urbana/Champaign, Illinois. My segment will run from 1:06 to 1:50 pm (CDT). That’s a nice, long stretch of time, so host William Hammack and I should be able to deal with The Frodo Franchise in some detail. Plus it’s a live show with listener Q & A. If you’re within receiving range of that station and have a question, please give us a call!

[Update September 15: Now online.]

    The Frodo Franchise
    by Kristin Thompson

    US flagbuy at best price

    Canadian flagbuy at best price

    UK flagbuy at best price

    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.”