[worry]

http://www.avclub.co...-delay-quits-pr,41632/


UPDATE: Del Toro confirms The Hobbit delay, quits project altogether
by Jason Heller May 31, 2010 From Coming Soon: Today at a press conference for Splice, the upcoming sci-fi thriller he co-produced, Guillermo Del Toro fielded questions about The Hobbit. The news isn't good: The eagerly-anticipated prequel to The Lord Of The Rings is apparently trapped in limbo for the time being, due mainly to MGM's financial woes. Says Del Toro, "It's not greenlit… We've been caught in a very tangled negotiation... There cannot be any start dates until the MGM situation gets resolved. They do hold a considerable portion of the rights."

Also, rumors about the film being shot in 3-D are unfounded at this point, with Del Toro stating that that possibility has come up only once in meetings. Still, Del Toro sounded confident, saying that MGM may sell off some of the rights to the film to keep it moving forward, adding, "We have designed all the creatures. We've designed the sets and the wardrobe. We have done animatics and planned battles sequences.... We are very, very prepared for when it is finally triggered."

UPDATE: Three days after confirming some of The Hobbit's production delays, Guillermo Del Toro has officially quit the two-film project. As AP reports, the director told a Lord Of The Rings fansite, "In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming The Hobbit, I am faced with the hardest decision of my life. After nearly two years of living, breathing, and designing a world as rich as Tolkien's Middle Earth, I must, with great regret, take leave from helming these wonderful pictures."

According to executive producer and TLOTR director Peter Jackson, the search for a replacement on The Hobbit will begin immediately, and Del Toro will remain on board as a co-screenwriter. Adds Jackson, "We feel very sad to see Guillermo leave The Hobbit... The bottom line is that Guillermo just didn't feel he could commit six years to living in New Zealand, exclusively making these films, when his original commitment was for three years. Guillermo is one of the most remarkable creative spirits I've ever encountered and it has been a complete joy working with him."

This post has been edited by worrywort: 31 May 2010 - 08:57 PM

[Defiance]

He didn't want to live in New Zealand for six years? Crazy motherfucker, New Zealand is one of the most beautiful places on earth.

[rhulad]

I want that movie to be done now, I don't want to wait for six years.

[Eye Flys]

Good! Fuck that douche tard Peter Jackson. Those LOTR films were AWEFUL. That half hour love fest / hobbit orgy made me puke. It was disgusting. Two films to make The Hobbit?!? Are you fucking kidding me? Completely unnecessary.

Del Toro is great and I love his films but hearing his name attached to this project made me fear for the worst. Very nice to hear is off that and doing his own thing.

[worry]

what a total wiener of an opinion. which you're entitled to of course.

[Stalker]

Eye Flys, on 31 May 2010 - 10:40 PM, said:

<snip> Those LOTR films were AWEFUL. <snip>

Awe-ful or awful? I pick awe-ful, huge fan of the movies and thought they were well done representations of the books.

I'm a little disappointed to see this being further delayed, however it has to be made at some point right? I'm willing to wait as long as it does get done and does a good job of it too. Though I agree that two movies doesn't seem necessary, the other books were done in one movie.

[EsotericForest]

Eye Flys, on 31 May 2010 - 10:40 PM, said:

Good! Fuck that douche tard Peter Jackson. Those LOTR films were AWEFUL. That half hour love fest / hobbit orgy made me puke. It was disgusting. Two films to make The Hobbit?!? Are you fucking kidding me? Completely unnecessary.

Del Toro is great and I love his films but hearing his name attached to this project made me fear for the worst. Very nice to hear is off that and doing his own thing.

Haha, I don't think I've ever heard you say anything positive

But anyway! I'm annoyed that the delays are putting these movies back so much. I was looking forward to them. I saw Lord of the Rings in theaters before I read the books, so I think I'm able to appreciate the movies more since I didn't judge them against the books originally. The movies are well done in my opinion, and very enjoyable. If the movie was filmed 100% the way the book was written, you'd end up with a pretty crappy movie. The books are excellent in their own right, but they weren't made for the theaters. The same thing would happen if somebody tried to turn the Malazan Books of the Fallen into several movies...if they followed the books to a T...it'd make for one very confusing movie haha.

[Eye Flys]

I said Del Toro is great, that's positive!

[Illuyankas]

The LOTR films were flawed, but at least they left Tom Bombadil out. If you think he should have been left in, you are a dirty dirty hippy.

[SpectreofEschaton]

IMO, it wasn't deviating from the book that caused the films to fail (which is of course necessary in many parts, even Tolkien admitted that) but in the complete changing of storylines and characters for...largely no discernible reason, and almost always for the much, much worse.

Case in point: Sam's line "By rights, we shouldn't even be here!" in Osgilliath. No, my god, no you ****ing shouldn't!

It's not that the book didn't have problems (hint, it did) but that Peter Jackson and his two screenwriters are complete idiots when it comes to plotting.

To quote the professor, "Z may believe he knows more than I when it comes to Balrogs. I, of course, do not agree."

[QuickTidal]

The good news to be found in this is that we will instead get to see Guillermo make his own vision films, which I think I can safely say would be leaps and bounds better than adapting The Hobbit. We did LOTR, it took like ten years to get them all made and released....let's move on now to another property. This one is not only tired, but it's been effing done.

They need to put some money down and start making WOT films. Something different FFS.

I hope that HBO's a Game of Thrones re-jump starts the fantasy film industry, cause LOTR was supposed to revive it, and all it did was allow a bunch of useless twit screenwriters and filmakers to make crap like The Seeker, Earthsea, Eragon, Bridge To Terabithia, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Dragonball Evolution, Inkheart....need I go on?

I think the only films that escape unscathed as decent fantasy flicks since LOTR are the Harry Potter films (and I'll thank untainted British thespians for how good those are) and Prince Caspian (for being braver than its predecessor). Byond that it's been a bunch of shitty YA fantasy adaptations. WTF?

Like I said, I hope A Game Of Thrones does well....as it can only help the industry again. Sorry LOTR, you didn't help it much.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 31 May 2010 - 11:38 PM

[worry]

The films didn't fail. I suppose, in the furthest, strangest realms of the imagination, that it might be up for debate...but to present it as a fact, as a given, as a premise upon which to make further argument, simply removes you from the conversation all together.

[SpectreofEschaton]

worrywort, on 31 May 2010 - 11:44 PM, said:

The films didn't fail. I suppose, in the furthest, strangest realms of the imagination, that it might be up for debate...but to present it as a fact, as a given, as a premise upon which to make further argument, simply removes you from the conversation all together.

Well, they certainly didn't fail monetarily.

And I did say "In my opinion" they failed (or rather, meant, "they failed to me because...").

Simply put, I don't find the imagination of Peter Jackson enjoyable (or maybe it's Boyens and Walsh I should be referring to, since I think they wrote most of the script). The slaughtering of characters to provide comic relief, or the complete rewriting of them in the case of Aragorn and Faramir and others, simply did not appeal to me in the slightest. Not to say that there wasn't room for improvement from the books, but dwarf jokes and fail-Pippin really wasn't the direction to go in. (again, IMO)

To sum up my point, I fully believe that the films should have been titled in full "Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings" because there was enough of his "vision" pushing the story away from Tolkien's that it really bears only a partial resemblance to the books. (And again, that's not to say it would have been optimal to film the books verbatim, but closer to Tolkien's "vision" shouldn't have been that difficult if the focus wasn't to create a mass-marketed fantasy film complete with THE stereotypical dwarf (complete with 0 personality beyond "axes, beards, and ale") an utterly contrived romance, and giant burning EYE as an antagonist.

*sigh* This is a bad subject for me. I'm willing to bow out if I'm bothering anyone.

[Bent]

QuickTidal, on 31 May 2010 - 11:37 PM, said:

Bridge To Terabithia

This I take offense to, the movie wasbrilliant, as close to the book as when I read it 20 years ago. Everything else is spot on. Cheerio! What-What?

[Gabriele]

Defiance, on 31 May 2010 - 08:56 PM, said:

He didn't want to live in New Zealand for six years? Crazy motherfucker, New Zealand is one of the most beautiful places on earth.

I suppose he didn't want to sit at some boring negotiation table for six years, not even in NZ.

[worry]

Nah, you don't have to bow out. I was just speaking overly grandly for the hell of it. Though I do think calling the films "failures" on any level, not just financially, to be ludicrously hyperbolic. Then again, I don't have much sympathy for the perspective that films should necessarily mirror the source books, however dear those books may be. If they capture the spirit -- or frankly, sometimes any appealing spirit will do -- then the film can stand on its own. The hybrid of PJ and Tolkien worked for me quite well. Then again, I like PJ quite a bit. I loved Heavenly Creatures, Dead Alive, and Forgotten Silver (and to some degree, though it was bloated, I really enjoyed King Kong).

But I do agree that Gimli was the LOTR adaptation's biggest bungle (except at Moria), the handling of the army of the dead was the second biggest, and the multiple outros were a pain. Part of this was because I'm sure lots of fans wanted to see the destruction in Hobbiton, and that anticipation was squashed with sappier stuff. But I enjoyed the sappy stuff, personally. I have a personal theory that if PJ hadn't faded all the way to black between all these scenes, people's patience wouldn't have been tested quite so much.

And I agree with Bent that Bridge to Terabithia was fantastic (as was the unmentioned Zathura -- Josh Hutcherson is really one of the better child actors around). I don't particularly want a resurgence in "serious" or non-YA fantasy film though. The fact that Game of Thrones has a season rather than two hours is its biggest positive point to me.

All of that said, I really really really want to see a two-part Hobbit movie.

[Gabriele]

worrywort, on 01 June 2010 - 01:26 AM, said:

Then again, I don't have much sympathy for the perspective that films should necessarily mirror the source books, however dear those books may be. If they capture the spirit -- or frankly, sometimes any appealing spirit will do -- then the film can stand on its own.

Agreed, but for me the movies didn't capture the spirit, except for the settings. Aragorn as emo kid, Faramir as bully, Gimli as comic relief, Denethor as madman with bad table manners, Theoden as clueless grandfather, Arwen as being there in the first place, and speaking with that odd voice, plus the Cliff of Uncanonicity, Frodo sending Sam away, Eomer not being there most of the time (ok, I admit I thought he was hot and wanted to see more of him ), "Arwen's fate is now tied to the ring," Legolas' mumak stunt .... I'm pretty sure most of that could have been handled in a better way.

This post has been edited by Gabriele: 01 June 2010 - 01:55 AM

[QuickTidal]

Bent, on 01 June 2010 - 12:53 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 31 May 2010 - 11:37 PM, said:

Bridge To Terabithia

This I take offense to, the movie wasbrilliant, as close to the book as when I read it 20 years ago. Everything else is spot on. Cheerio! What-What?

It's likely that I feel this way cause I didn't read it as a kid....so I am willing to take that one back, for the sake of those that enjoyed it for nostalgia's sake.

Zathura was awesome....but then it was Jon Favreau's testing ground for them to see if he could handle Iron Man...and I don't count Zathura in my list of successes in Fantasy films cause it is more sci-fi. But yeah, it's really good.

[worry]

Besides Gimli, I liked every single one of those things just fine (though your characterizations for them are amusing). I forgot one negative above though, which was Galadriel's temptation moment, which annoyed me. My list of things they got right, mostly other than my disagreements with your list, would include: Eowen, Hobbiton, the hobbits themselves (with a slightly different Frodo), Boromir, Gandalf, the Balrog, Saruman and Wormtongue, the orcs and Uruk-Hai, the Nazgul, Shelob, the elves in general, improving the Ents and Arwen, and of course a pitch-perfect Gollum who to me is the heart of the story.

This post has been edited by worrywort: 01 June 2010 - 02:14 AM

[QuickTidal]

worrywort, on 01 June 2010 - 01:26 AM, said:

Nah, you don't have to bow out. I was just speaking overly grandly for the hell of it. Though I do think calling the films "failures" on any level, not just financially, to be ludicrously hyperbolic. Then again, I don't have much sympathy for the perspective that films should necessarily mirror the source books, however dear those books may be. If they capture the spirit -- or frankly, sometimes any appealing spirit will do -- then the film can stand on its own. The hybrid of PJ and Tolkien worked for me quite well. Then again, I like PJ quite a bit. I loved Heavenly Creatures, Dead Alive, and Forgotten Silver (and to some degree, though it was bloated, I really enjoyed King Kong).

But I do agree that Gimli was the LOTR adaptation's biggest bungle (except at Moria), the handling of the army of the dead was the second biggest, and the multiple outros were a pain. Part of this was because I'm sure lots of fans wanted to see the destruction in Hobbiton, and that anticipation was squashed with sappier stuff. But I enjoyed the sappy stuff, personally. I have a personal theory that if PJ hadn't faded all the way to black between all these scenes, people's patience wouldn't have been tested quite so much.

Indeed. The spirit remains for the most part, regardless of the character screw ups, at least in Fellowship.

I like when a film can find the comfy middle ground between source book material and celluloid. The Harry Potter films, for the most part certainly do this. You don't want it to follow TOO closely to the book or you end up with something muddled and incomprehensible (like THE LOVELY BONES, which was an atrocious adaptation of the book, and films like SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS, and THE CIDER HOUSE RULES) and then on the other end when it strays too far that the source material isn't even really on board anymore (like PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS THE LIGHTNING THIEF, which pissed all over the books and made me mad, or films the likes of I AM LEGEND or even to a certain extent STARDUST felt a little too far from the book...but that's one of my fave books so I am biased). So it's tough to find that middle ground.

That said, I feel that LOTR only really got close to that middle ground in the first film. About half of TTT and most of ROTK fall quite short of that comfort, for a lot of people I guess. Those both felt like they were trying very hard to be accurate while they KNEW they weren't being accurate. Still...Helms Deep is one of the best fantasy action sequences ever put to film...and doesn't that speak volumes when that battle sequence trumps the final battle in ROTK by miles and miles? Ask folk which one they'd prefer to watch and I guarantee most feel Helms Deep is superior.

Agreed. Gollum is the best thing about those films and they are about him really.

So yeah, there's a part of me that will be really pissed off if they fight over making the Hobbit for the next 6 years and then make it and that puts the kibosh on any other fantasy projects while studios hold their money back for fear of failing box office...

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 01 June 2010 - 02:17 AM