Posted on 12/04/2014 8:54:23 AM PST by bkopto
Peter Jackson has said he won't be making anymore movies based on J. R. R. Tolkien's work, because the estate won't let him.
SNIP
The writer's son Christopher, who was appointed by his father as his literary executor, said that he was disappointed by the way the movies had diluted the artistry of the novels.
He told Le Monde in 2012: 'Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time.
'The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work and what it has become has overwhelmed me. The commercialisation has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.'
SNIP
The contract between the estate and the film studio ensured a profit percentage would go back to them, but despite the Lord Of The Rings trilogy netting a reported $2.9 billion in global box office sales studio bosses said a profit wasn't made when counted against the production costs of all three films.
Tolkien Estate lawyer Cathleen Blackburn told Le Monde in 2012: 'These hugely popular films apparently did not make any profit! We were receiving statements saying that the producers did not owe the Tolkien Estate a dime.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Hollywood accounting.
The bean counters there can "prove" that no major studio film has made a profit since Gone With the Wind, and that it did not break even until 1982...
The wonder is that they can still find holders of valuable book rights who will sell for net points. Its like a land owner leasing their mineral rights for net income. Nuts.
Last year’s news. How many movies would that require either way, like I inferred?
Hollywood has very creative accounting, they never make any profits.
They have lefty privilege
Maybe the IRS should look into it.
The screen adaptation of the LOTR was very well done, but it is still limited as a movie.
The son is correct, the artistry and magic of the books was not, and can never be, captured by a movie. To read the trilogy for the first time, hopefully before one sees the movies is a great experience. It is fulfilling and broadening at the same time. The movies are great entertainment, but they don’t replace the work itself and the son should not expect them to do something that impossible.
The impossibility is a credit to the original work not a criticism of the movie’s execution.
When I saw the first one, I was amazed that they’d portrayed every single character, even the Orcs, exactly as I imagined them while reading the books. I think they did a damn fine job, at least in the LOTR trilogy.
And scrub out the extended scenes that were put in solely as an excuse for producing video-games based on them.
I had some sympathy for the added elements in the movies based on The Hobbit that had a basis in the Tolkien canon -- Gandalf's support of Thorin's quest was part of the actions the White Council took in reponse to the rise of "the Necromancer" (Sauron) at Dol Guldur, and being told for movie audiences who had already seen LOTR it made sense to put them in. That, however, would have made a good sequence of two films, not three.
Early on he was talking about all kinds of stuff like that. By the time ROTK finished though he declared himself done, didn’t want to do anymore Tolkien, had Hobbiton torn apart, clapped his hands over the table and walked away. It’s even in the extras on the extended ROTK, he talks quite a bit about how very done he is with it.
The studios will want to, but they’ve already shown they think PJ is the magic touch. It’s why they wouldn’t fund Hobbit until he agreed to at least produce. Maybe after all the bad reviews they’ll decide it’s the material not him and negotiate with the family. And, of course, eventually there’ll be a whole new batch. It’s Hollywood, they’ve been doing remakes for over 100 years.
This is common in the industry, I believe “Return of the Jedi” still claims on paper to have never made a dime... Set up a shell distribution company to hide all the profits and then claim none were made....
The eternal and everlasting copyright strikes again.
I have a good friend who is a very well known actor who married a girl from my hometown.
He told me the trick was a percentage of actual ticket sales (not just gross, as it can be manipulated between the distributor and the theaters), plus a percentage of the gross on DVD, iTunes, Netflix, etc.
Yes, every once in a while there comes along the magical, near-mythical “first dollar gross” deal... which only a handful of actors, directors or producers ever achieve - and even then, it is usually just for a short time and only on certain kinds of projects...
Yep, would make a great cable TV series. There is a lot of material in SF and Fantasy that would make great film - Valdemar, Recluse, Known Space, etc. My favorite would be making movies out of Dennis McKiernan's Mithgar books.
“It was sort of like paddling around in the shallow end of the pool thinking you’re safe and all of a sudden realizing that you were in the deep end all along. Problem is, you can only do that once, but it sure worked on me.”
It was a wonderful read, tooling around in the Shire, and you’re exactly right about the arrival of the Black Riders. I read the whole thing about three and a half times I think, got bogged down in the middle the fourth time through, the second book was the darkest.
The movies have been amazingly like how I saw it in my mind’s eye, except for the Orcs. I had major issues with their portrayal as WWF-rejects. To me they should have looked like ragged hybrid raven-ostriches, nailed-on shoes and all. Gollum was great in CG mode, and other beasts - I would have liked to see the same care given to the Orcs.
The elves and their cities were wonderful. Gandalf in the Dark Tower was awesome. The hobbits were great. Strider/Aragorn was excellent.
All in all, great fun. Tolkien may have been disappointed, but he and the Inklings would have been disappointed in many things about our times. They would have grieved the loss of the joy of the written word in favor of technology and everything being visualized FOR us.
Hell, I grieve at the loss of bookstores. I could spend hours in my favorite haunts. That’s all gone now. What a shame.
“Hell, I grieve at the loss of bookstores. I could spend hours in my favorite haunts. That’s all gone now. What a shame.”
And there is a generation coming along who will never know what they missed.
I still love the feel of a REAL book, not a Kindle. I love to work my way through, turning the pages. I love the smell of a good book. I feel like I’ve landed in the world of Fahrenheit 411. I have an entire wall of books that I refuse to let go of because books are disappearing from the world. It’s just WRONG.
Moving is a PITA. But it’s worth it. I’ll die owning real books, dammit.
I know what you mean. I have some volumes of GK Chesterton published by Ignatius Press are like works of art in the quality of workmanship.
I also have far too many books and simply don’t have space for more. So while I prefer real books I now rely on kindle.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.