Peter Jackson is canny.
And not just when it comes to camera angles and CGI special effects.
Here, have some Hobbit.
The prime mover behind the triple-decker blockbuster Lord of the Rings films has settled his differences with (and his lawsuit against, for an undisclosed sum) New Line Cinema. This opens the door for him to bring The Hobbit and a sequel to the silver screen circa 2010 – 2011.
John Scalzi guesses that the timing of settlement — which ends a long-running feud between auteur and studio — may have a little to do with
the very expensive The Golden Compass cratering very badly at the box office ($40 million in two weeks, with a nearly 66% dropoff in the second weekend — not good news when your production budget is $180 million and you’ve sold off the foreign rights). . . . I can’t imagine that Mr. Jackson and friends will not profit handsomely from this either, so well done to him indeed. And all he had to do was wait until New Line needed him more than he needed New Line. Sneaky.
That Jackson is a shrewd one, he is.
If you’re interested about the the voyage of The Golden Compass from explicitly anti-religious book to would-be Hollywood blockbuster, try this Atlantic Monthly feature by Hanna Rosin:
. . . Movies that deeply offend Christian sensibilities do get made from time to time: The Last Temptation of Christ, Dogma, and, last year, The Da Vinci Code, a major Sony release. The last one lends credence to Pullman’s idea that a faithful translation of his books could have been commercially viable. It’s possible that New Line’s executives once thought so too. New Line, after all, has a reputation for picking up edgy projects, like Boogie Nights and Se7en. When the studio bought the rights to The Golden Compass, in 2002, it was flush with the success of The Lord of the Rings, and perhaps its leadership imagined making something less anodyne. If so, a more nervous mood has since prevailed.
Apparently, it’s the kind of mood that leads New Line to settle with Jackson so he can get cranked up on another crowd-pleasing Middle Earth epic filmed against New Zealand’s gorgeous scenery. As a fan of the Tolkien books and the Lord of the Rings films, all I can say is goody!
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In other film news, Will Smith continues his run of box office success with I Am Legend. As we’ve discussed before, he’s pretty canny, too.
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Well you must’ve had fun with this one so let me quibble and riff on a couple of fronts. First off, have you seen the movie ? It’s not great but it’s not bad. Certainly didn’t strike me as anti-Catholic; it did strike me as anti-totalitarian power. In fact it and the books could be taken as much as an attack on fascism as a theology as anything. All that said if you’ve read the books clever but they ain’t Tolkien which takes us to the primary business lesson here and in an age where innovation will become increasingly important they are critical. If you look at the extra-features on the LofR DVDs (ext. ed) you see a perfect example of how a large, multi-talented and prideful team is put together and held together but a really skilled project director. What doesn’t get as much attention is the big cojones required for the VC’s (New Line this case) to put down that big a bet that could’ve destroyed them. You can consider Goldn’ Compass an attempt to clone that effect. As in a way so was King Kong which also didn’t recover it’s investments with an appropriate ROI.
What’s the heart and soul of the differences here ? LofR had a magnificent story that resonated with it’s audience while Golden Compass was much less well-written and much more narrowly cast. So the VCs made a bad gamble playing the odds. And despite KK’s huge budget, great special effects the story was fun but not up to the mythic stature (literally) of LofR.
Here’s the point – if the fundamental grasp of the customer value/problem AND the initial design of the product aren’t superb you won’t have breakthru innovation. The 2nd major point is that this is the sine qu non but unless great concept, including initial value analysis, and high-level design is coupled with well-run and sychronized execution of the backend operational pieces you’re going to have problems.
It’s only cost me 25 years or so to figure that out so FWIW take LofR as a model, soup-to-nuts of how to do major strategic innovation and GC and KK as NOT. :) !!
Thanks for the long note, dblwyo.
I’ll quibble with your quibble slightly: the book version of The Golden Compass isn’t just anti-Catholic but more or less explicitly anti-Christian. Pullman is one of the most famously atheist people in Britain, and he wrote the trilogy as an anti-Christian work. The Atlantic article talks about his script was neutered of its anti-religious bent — by switching the overt focus entirely to anti-totalitarianism — during the long and winding process by which the film came to be.
Your larger metaphor certainly offers great food for thought. I will mull . . .
And as for King Kong, I think they would have done fine if they had dropped the dinosaurs-on-clips bit (that had to be a few mil $ down the drain right there) and the death-worms-eating-brains bit. I wanted it to be more than it turned out to be.
I can agree with you about King Kong, Tim, but I am such a fan of Jackson’s, and Kong’s, that I edit out the offending clips from the reel that plays in my head. My lasting memory from KK is the experience of being allowed, through Jackson’s directing and attention to detail, to forget that Kong was a digital simulacrum. It’s the same skill he used to great effect in the LOTR trilogy and I was thrilled to find out yesterday that (finally) the questions about The Hobbit have been put to rest. I’m packing my gear for the ticket line already.
Edgar — I think you raise an excellent poing about Jackson’s use of digital effects in King Kong (and in LoTR, for that matter): not just to do gee-whiz stuff, but to make mythical stuff look absolutely *real*.
Best use I’ve ever seen for this: Master & Commander. The CGI is so well done that you don’t even realize when it’s being done — you just suspend disbelief and actually believe that they’re sailing around Tierra del Fuego,etc.
Please do mull the larger question – after many years on the bleeding edge and still wearing my arrows it’s pretty experience based. Meanwhile….
actually picked up the first two of three books in the series a couple of years back. Found them clever but not that entrancing and got bored enough at the end of two not to go on. That said, despite whatever the interpretations or even intentions might have been, I didn’t find the books anti-religious at all. Anti-authority absolutely – and if one conflates authority with religion…but it my mind it could as easily have been an English sorta Stalinist regime; or France under Napoleon in some smaller ways. If you want to have an extraordinary experience on that line try Richard III with Gandalf, I mean Ian McKellen.
As a sailor M&C is my favorite and all the other layers are wonderful. The sailing scenes, trim, heading, healing are quite authentic seeming. No RN Captain of the line would hang in the rigging around the Horn however :)