If you weren’t able to make it to Comic-Con this year, don’t worry: Your local showing of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (opening Dec. 14) will recreate roughly 70 percent of the experience.
Director Zack Snyder told MTV News on Tuesday that the first full trailer for his Superman movie Man of Steel (out June 14, 2013) will unspool before Peter Jackson’s return to Middle Earth. READ FULL STORY »
Forget orcs. The most fearsome creatures in the Tolkien universe may be lawyers.
The estate of author J.R.R. Tolkien, the man who brought forth all things Middle Earth with the magic tucked inside his pen, has filed suit against Warner Bros., New Line, and the Saul Zaentz Company for copyright infringement and breach of contract, alleging that the studio had gone far beyond the “limited” merchandising rights it holds for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. When the estate sold the film rights to those Tolkien books in 1969, the suit alleges, it only allowed for “the manufacture, sale and distribution of … any and all articles of tangible personal property,” but the suit claims the defendants have “with increasing boldness, engaged in a continuing and escalating pattern of usurping rights to which they are not entitled.” READ FULL STORY »
Director Peter Jackson has issued a statement denying allegations in an Associated Press article of animal mistreatment during the production of the upcoming fantasy epic The Hobbit. The AP story claims that, according to four wranglers who worked on the film, more than two dozen animals died due to unsafe conditions on a farm near Wellington, New Zealand. But in a joint statement with the film’s producers, Jackson firmly denies the charge that the animals died due to poor treatment on the part of the production. “The producers completely reject the accusations that twenty seven animals died due to mistreatment during the making of the films,” the statement reads. “Extraordinary measures were taken to make sure that animals were not used during action sequences or any other sequence that might create undue stress for the animals involved.”
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Animal wranglers involved in the making of The Hobbit movie trilogy say the production company is responsible for the deaths of up to 27 animals, largely because they were kept at a farm filled with bluffs, sinkholes and other “death traps.”
The American Humane Association, which is overseeing animal welfare on the films, says no animals were harmed during the actual filming. But it also says the wranglers’ complaints highlight shortcomings in its oversight system, which monitors film sets but not the facilities where the animals are housed and trained.
A spokesman for trilogy director Peter Jackson on Monday acknowledged that horses, goats, chickens and one sheep died at the farm near Wellington where about 150 animals were housed for the movies, but he said some of the deaths were from natural causes.
Peter Jackson just laid the smackdown on RPatz and James Bond.
Advance tickets for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which doesn’t open in theaters until Dec. 14, went on sale on Wednesday, and if we’re speaking plainly, they crushed it. Sales for the film on Fandango accounted for 33 percent of all tickets sold that day on the ticket website, dethroning Breaking Dawn — Part 2, which had held the top spot since Oct. 1. Skyfall, the latest in the 007 franchise, placed second, with 31 percent of the day’s sales. The Twilight crew came in third, with 28 percent of the day’s take.
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‘The Hobbit’ advance tickets going on sale Nov. 7, but that’s not all…
Familiar faces pop up in latest ‘Hobbit’ TV teaser — EXCLUSIVE VIDEO
Peter Jackson on a possible Stephen Colbert ‘Hobbit’ cameo: ‘I’ve never met a bigger Tolkien geek in my life’
Image Credit: Warner Bros.
Tolkien fanatics, ready your browsers! Advance tickets for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — which opens Dec. 14 — will be available for purchase on Wednesday, Nov. 7 starting at 12 p.m. ET.
But if snagging the earliest seats for the first of three films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved novel just isn’t enough Middle Earth for you, you’re in luck. READ FULL STORY »
With the upcoming Dec. 14 opening of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — the first installment in director Peter Jackson’s highly anticipated three-part return to Middle-earth — looming on the horizon, Warner Bros. is stoking the buzz furnace with a new TV spot that brings back some familiar faces from the Lord of the Rings films (Gandalf! Gollum! Galadriel!), showcases some new ones (Bilbo Baggins! Giant trolls! Dwarves throwing plates!), and packs a load of action into its 30 all-too-brief seconds.
Check it out below: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images
Stephen Colbert’s massive love of the fantasy world of J.R.R. Tolkien is well established. This is a man who, on an episode of the Colbert Report last year, explained the debt ceiling crisis using Lord of the Rings action figures. Then, if there was still any lingering question exactly how giant a nerd he really is, he whipped out “Aragorn’s sword Anduril, Flame of the West, forged from the shards of Narsil” just to show off to the audience that he had it. In a recent Playboy interview, Colbert gushed fanboy-ishly about his visit to the New Zealand set of The Hobbit and, when asked if he would make some sort of cameo, answered with a coy, “Could be.” Since then, reports citing unnamed sources have circulated suggesting Colbert will indeed have some kind of cameo in one of the later Hobbit movies. But, if so, what will he be? An elf? (He does have that one slightly elvish-looking ear.) A dwarf? A faux-conservative talk-show-hosting hobbit?
Image Credit: James Fisher
Middle-earth will sound more realistic in The Hobbit.
Dolby Laboratories Inc. and director Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production announced Wednesday that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be mixed and released in Dolby Atmos, the company’s immersive new sound system that features two extra arrays of overhead speakers and the ability to direct sounds to individual speakers inside movie theaters.
“(Jackson) felt it was going to make a big difference in how he tells stories,” said Stuart Bowling, Dolby’s senior technical marketing manager. “He doesn’t want people to just go and observe his movies. He wants you to feel like you’re part of the experience of the stories that’s he’s trying to tell on the screen and allow you to be part of Middle-earth.” READ FULL STORY »
Are you concerned you won’t be able to tell the dwarves apart in Peter Jackson’s forthcoming Hobbit trilogy? Never fear, for the studios behind the films have released a banner poster to help you learn all their names.
Last week, a full poster featuring the dwarves surfaced on the film’s Facebook page, but it did not do us the courtesy of listing the (very similar) monikers of the 13 dwarves. (And we thought we had it bad with Snow White’s seven dwarves.) So New Line and MGM have released an entirely new banner with all the major players. Check it out below (for a larger photo, click here): READ FULL STORY »
