Peter Jackson, Frank Walsh and Philippa Boyens will collaborate with director Guillermo Del Toro on the screenplays for the latter’s two Hobbit movies. The original plan was to hire outside hands to produce a script, but in order to make the first film’s 2011 release date, Del Toro and Jackson apparently concurred that they needed a team of “people intimate with Tolkien’s world of Middle Earth.”
Eon, the company that produces movies based on James Bond novels, has declined to buy the rights to the latest 007 book, Devil May Care. The book is set in 1967, and Eon is determined to keep this new wave of Bond films as contemporary as possible.
Juliet Snowden and Stiles White, the team responsible for the script for Michael Bay’s remake of The Birds, have now been hired to write a do-over of Poltergeist.
Kirk Kerkorian, who has already owned MGM three times and was responsible for extending the film studio brand into Las Vegas, is rumored to have made an offer to buy the company for a fourth time for a low-ball bid of $3 billion.
It’s been three months since the trades reported Guillermo Del Toro was in talks to direct The Hobbit(as two separate films). So why has it taken this long for the deal to be set in stone? Over at The Movie Blog, John thinks some of it had to do with Del Toro wanting to make sure he would have enough creative control, considering he’ll be working for producer Peter Jackson.
How much control will Guillermo del Toro have? I’ll be willing to bet this was one of the big issues delaying the official announcement of his agreeing to direct the projects. Peter Jackson helmed The Lord of the Rings… will he allow del Toro (a better director over all in my opinion… although both are insanely gifted) the freedom to make these films as he sees fit with modestly limited interference? Clearly del Toro should listen to the studio and to Jackson in particular… but these are HIS movies now, not Jacksons, and for the most part he needs to be the man in charge now. Will they let that happen?
After finally seeing Spider-Man 3the other day, I’ll be happy to never see another Sam Raimi movie again. So, when it was announced Monday that Guillermo Del Toro, instead of Raimi, was in talks to direct the back-to-back Hobbitmovies, I was somewhat relieved. But now with Del Toro himself pretty much confirming he’s on board for the Lord of the Ringprequels (I know in the book world prequel isn’t the appropriate word, but in the New Line film series, and as far as mass audience is concerned, it is), I’m still a bit worried about the look of the films. Will Gollum suddenly have no eyes, like many of the creatures in Del Toro’s recent works? Will he be played by Doug Jones rather than a CGI Andy Serkis? Will Middle-earth now be a more stylized place?
One of the great things about Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy is that he made it look fairly straight-forward. There wasn’t much of the filmmaker’s personality in it. Sure, some of Middle-earth’s design had its influences (Rivendell looked painted by Maxfield Parrish, for example), but you couldn’t say the films necessarily or significantly reflected Jackson in any sort of a stylistic sense. Del Toro is much more of an auteur, though, and it’s easy to imagine his Hobbit duology bearing more a resemblance to his own films than to Jackson’s LOTRs (just look at how Hellboy IIlooks so similar to Pan’s Labyrinth). Of course, New Line couldn’t let too much divert from what the audience is used to, right? No way would anybody permit for Del Toro to do his own thing with Gollum or any other part of the franchise so that it would be unrecognizable to moviegoers. But then why not just hire some new, more malleable director to be Jackson’s Matt Reeves/James McTeague/Tobe Hooper?
I’m sure you heard about the announcement heard round Middle Earth the world yesterday: Peter Jackson has settled his differences with New Line and has come on board as executive producer of the studio’s two Lord of the Ringsprequels. It wasn’t mentioned in the press release, but Jackson has decided not to direct either of the installments in New Line’s adaptation of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, though the news that he’s involved should be enough. Clearly, the studio simply needed to get some good news, any good news, out there — likely more for Time Warner shareholders than Tolkien or Jackson fans.
I wasn’t the only person to immediately assume the settlement between Jackson and New Line had something to do with the latter’s disappointment with the box office of The Golden Compass. Both bloggers and blog comments were quick to claim that, “The Golden Compass’s low box office was the best thing that could have happened for LotR fans” (said “E” on Cinematical) and pat themselves on the back, as if it was all planned: “Well done everyone for not turning up for Compass!!” (from “wildphantom07″ on AICN). The real question, then, is how much more in Jackson’s favor was the settlement? We’ll probably never know, but we can imagine. After a very bad year, New Line was possibly pretty desperate.
Of course, nobody at the studio would ever admit to such a suggestion. Entertainment Weekly has the denial:
New Line is quick to point out that The Hobbit resolution is in no way a reaction to disappointing domestic box office numbers for their most recent release, The Golden Compass, which they had hoped would launch a new franchise. “Absolutely not,” said Lynne. “This has been in the works for a while now. Golden Compass, by the way, overseas, is performing spectacularly. Obviously, we have been disappointed with its performance here, but I think overall it will do quite well.”
American Gangster managed “the highest opening for an R-rated crime drama in history” this weekend, earning $46.3 million to Bee Movie’s $39.1 million at the box office. The animated film opened on almost 25 percent more screens than Ridley Scott’s love letter to a 70s drug kingpin. Meanwhile, Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead added 40 screens and saw its weekend take rise 440 percent. Julien Temple’s doc Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten scored the highest per-screen average of the weekend, with $10,193 on each of its two screens.
David O. Russell will direct a “risque political satire” called Nailed, which he’ll co-write with Kristin “Daughter of Al” Gore. Jessica Biel and Jake Gyllenhaal have already been cast, but the Hollywood Reporter story gives the impression that the script has yet to be written. Which might be a problem, because…
Last minute talks were unable to head off a strike. Movie studios are not so worried … yet. Enough preparation was done pre-strike to ensure a more or less full release schedule for 2008; the immediate problem, is that with late night shows expected to shut down until there’s a new WGA contract, stars and filmmakers will have to find a new venue for cheap promotion.
Lions For Lambs is, according to Dade Hayes, a “remarkably strident political work that takes dead aim at the Bush White House and assails post-9/11 foreign policy.” It’s also the first project to see release from the Tom Cruise-controlled United Artists, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Cruise’s comeback is riding on its success. And yet, it seems as though Cruise the producer hasn’t given Cruise the star (who plays a right-wing senator in Lambs) talking points on how to package his own political views in relation to the film.
Ryan Gosling gained 20 pounds and grew a beard for the job, and yet, a day before shooting was to begin, he was fired from Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones and replaced with Mark Wahlberg. Who wants to put money on what “creative differences” actually means in this case?
Graphic novel adaptation 30 Days of Night barely squeaked past Why Did I Get Married?at the box office this weekend, earning $16 million to Tyler Perry’s $12 million. Michael Clayton, which has already been written off as a failure by some Clooney haters, held on to the fourth place slot for the second week in a row. Star-studded Oscar bait continued to bomb pretty hard: Rendition opened wide in ninth place, and Reservation Road managed just $2,630 per screen in limited release.
***The Hollywood Reporter’s Barry Garron offers a summary of the state of Paris Hiton’s post-jail career. “Paris Hilton told Larry King that she has two films lined up for the summer. It is absolutely inconceivable that she will perform in either of them any better than she did while dodging King’s mostly superficial questions on Wednesday night.”
***Ready for a boldfaced onslaught? Ryan Gosling will join Rachel Weisz in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. The casting, according to THR, is “a coup for Jackson and Dreamworks,” because Gosling takes only a fraction of the many roles he’s offered.
***Blockbuster and Netflix have settled their mutual lawsuits. Netflix had sued Blockbuster for stealing their rental-by-mail patent; the ailing brick-and-mortar giant had counter-sued, claiming Netflix was attempting to establish a monopoly over the paper-envelope market. All is well now…at least for Netflix, whose stock is worth roughly five times that of their blue-and-yellow rivals.
Peter Jackson, Frank Walsh and Philippa Boyens 
It’s been three months since the trades reported Guillermo Del Toro was in talks to direct The Hobbit (as two separate films). So why has it taken this long for the deal to be set in stone? Over at The Movie Blog, John thinks some of it had to do with Del Toro wanting to make sure he would have enough creative control, considering he’ll be working for producer Peter Jackson.
After finally seeing 
American Gangster
Lions For Lambs
