Well once again it seems as if Peter Jackson is being reamed by a studio. First it was UNIVERSAL when they got bitten with the chicken-shit bug over KING KONG, simply because Disney had the solid, yet nowhere near as great MIGHTY JOE YOUNG. Now, it seems MIRAMAX has put the LORD OF THE RINGS films in turnaround. Now the only thing I can figure is they probably did some obnoxious polling with the NRG, where they called around the country and took a sampling of opinion from people. Or perhaps they thought about the performance of DRAGONHEART and WILLOW. Never mind the bit that those movies were not any good, nevermind the bit that they were original stories without an established readership or following. Oh, and they weren't based on what some people consider the greatest work ever written.
If I were over at SONY or UNIVERSAL or WARNERS or DREAMWORKS or MGM (God knows MGM needs a franchise like this) I'd snatch this baby up faster than you could say "Gollum". This is the surest bet there is, if they give Peter Jackson the room he needs to make it. We are not talking about a SUMMER flick, we are talking about a project that could very well be one of the biggest films ever. Can you imagine if we had a ol David O Selznick running a studio? The pre-hype on this movie would be astounding. It's a project you could create frothing lines of hungry fans panting to be let in. If Peter Jackson is indeed shopping this project around, GRAB IT, MAKE IT, and don't demand a buncha stupid things like "where's the female characters? Or it's not very ethnically diverse? Or where's the comedy relief?" No, instead say make the movie now. And I bet I have a few bazillion fans of the books on my side with this one. Oh well, I guess Miramax always has TOTAL RECALL 2...
Miramx/Disney have put the epic in turnaround. Peter
Jackson had planned on shooting 'em back to back in New Zealand
for 100 million. Nope. Now he's
shopping it around and not finding any takers. Damn. I was psyched
for that bad boy. I know this is
for real as I heard it from some legit financiers who are meeting with
Jackson shortly.
