You are viewing the archive: J.R.R. Tolkien
Given the behind the scenes false starts that seemed to plague the production of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – lawsuits, studio bankruptcy, a change in directors — it's perhaps a tad ironic that beginning the story of Lord of the Rings before the story of Lord of the Rings was never a problem. No, for Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens, the power troika behind the flick, beginning an episodic, rollicking, children's adventure story cum three-film epic was the easy part. Deciding where to end, however...
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After bringing 12 minutes of The Hobbit to Comic-Con — where Peter Jackson purposefully did not present footage in the 48 frames per second/3-D presentation that perplexed audiences at CinemaCon — the Lord of the Rings filmmaker spoke further about his desire to explore even more ground in the fantasy universe created by J.R.R. Tolkien. One possibility may be a third Hobbit film culled from Tolkien’s expansive LOTR notes and appendices, though Jackson admitted that the author’s posthumously published Silmarillion might present more of a challenge.
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Suzanne Collins can start her victory lap now. The film version of her first Hunger Games novel is on the brink of blowing up box-office records – and critics and fans like it, too. Other young-adult fantasy authors haven’t been quite so successful in dealing with Hollywood. Some of Collins’s success was luck and good timing: her first Hunger Games book was released a month after Stephenie Meyer’s final Twilight novel appeared, sending publishers and studios alike scrambling for the next young-adult franchise. But Collins also skillfully played the game with and for the filmmakers, making deliberate choices about how she wrote the novels and how she helped market them to the books’ fierce fans. Forget teenage love triangles or wizards vs. werewolves; here's a far more practical list of dos and don'ts for when your popular young-adult fantasy book is being adapted by Hollywood. (Spoilers for lesser movies ahead.)
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