Posted on 07/16/2009 6:59:56 PM PDT by ruination
New Zealand film-maker Peter Jackson may have more in common with JRR Tolkien's heirs than he thought - they are also complaining about big studio accounting methods.
Tolkien's family and a British charity they head, the Tolkien Trust, are seeking more than $US220 million ($276.94 million) in compensation for the Lord of the Rings trilogy Jackson made in New Zealand.
The Tolkien heirs sold movie rights to the LOTR books 40 years ago for 7.5 per cent of future receipts, but say that three films and $US6 billion ($7.55 billion) later, they have not seen a cent of the proceeds.
Jackson himself threatened to sue the New Line studio in a separate row over royalties from the Lord of the Rings, leading then studio chief Bob Shaye to declare that the New Zealander would "never" make The Hobbit.
I really missed seeing the Scouring of the Shire.
I gave them credit for that in the brief “premonition” that Frodo had (I think it was Frodo) in the movie. It wasn’t by the book, though, you are right.
Also, I don’t think they adequately portrayed the affection that developed between Faramir and Eowyn, but there was the slightest nod toward it at the end of the movie.
Pirating movies? That's not honest! says Hollywood.
There is one scene which is portrayed as the common misinterpretation which irks me far more than Bombadils absence...
Eowyn does not slay the Witch King. Eowyn is a Man, not an Elf, Dwarf, nor Orc, but a Man and as such is incapable of harming the Witch King. Merry is not a Man but a Hobbit.
Every critical action throughout the books is completed and can only be completed, though its value often goes unnoticed and results misattributed by the powerful to the powerful, by the Hobbits which are the embodiment of the common man. The idea that Tolkien decided to take a moment to deviate from this and celebrate female empowerment is asinine.
It was Merry who had already struck the killing blow. Though "behind the knee" would not normally be mortal, Merry was carrying a barrow blade enchanted to slay undead and when he used it the runes released a power which left Merrys right arm numb and "my sword burned all away like a piece of wood."
New Line was to pay a percentage of all gross receipts, after deducting 2.6 times the production costs, plus advertising expenses in excess of a certain amount, according to Eskenazi.
Ring pingage...
Actually it has been more than five years since the last LOTR movie won the Academy Award.
IMHO, the movies were not perfect. But they were darn near as close as you could get without making them 2-3 times as long.
They didn’t capture everything in the books. But they did a pretty darn good job of capturing the spirit of the books.
Which I agree with almost completely. The real ommission was Tom Bombadil who didn’t get any mention whatsoever.
My question really has to do with what their thinking was on leaving Bombadil out. Bombadil is quirky, and that could be it. Also, Bombadil is an aside that really doesn’t move the story along. That could have been the thinking.
What did Tolkien see Bombadil accomplishing?
True. Why put him into a movie? He neither starts nor resolves a storyline. Dead weight, the only dead weight in all 4 books IMHO.
Even Tolkien in his later writings was not sure what to do with Bombadil. He agreed that the character did not move the story along, but he was left in the original manuscript. I think he planned on developing Bombadil later in the story and never did, but that is just a guess.
Better hop on. The gravy train is leaving the station.
Another point that caused me to search the books was Galadriel’s warning about Boromir to Frodo. I actually thought I remembered that in the books and searched all over for it, but never found it. Turns out it wasn’t there.
But I sure had the impression that it was. Don’t know how that happened unless it was some other foreshadowing regarding Boromir that my memory was falsely attributing to Galadriel.
There's no way to win against the studio and their three sets of books.
We watched The Rockford Files on the Retro Channel while we were at the beach. I was thinking to myself “Yep Jim, you aren’t getting paid for this one either”.
Garner finally succeeded in getting to Universal’s third set of books, but it took YEARS and cost him a fortune plus his TV career. He decided someone had to do it.
My daughter wants to go to University of North Carolina at Wilmington because it has a film school. I told her to double major in Accounting.
Haha! Good advice, Dad. If there was a course in Show-Biz Accounting that would be even more perfect.
Wise advice. I would love to go to a film school, but I’m too realistic about the business side and I figure I’d starve long before I made a good living.
One of my fraternity brothers works in film and I see one of his jobs was Accounting Clerk. The rest seemed to be Office Production Assistant. She could do stuff like that. Thankfully, she has NO interest in acting.
His one acting bit was listed as “Drunk Party Guy”. I doubt he had trouble pulling that off.
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