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-Short Attention Span Theater-

One Sequel To Rule Them All

2006-09-14

Will Peter Jackson Direct The Hobbit?
If he doesn't, count on riots.
In what seems like an effort to put the roar back into the lion, MGM chairman-CEO Harry Sloan is looking to turn the studio into a tentpole factory and is about to announce some of the big-budget films currently in development. Not surprisingly, since the studio is anchored by its library of franchise-available titles, most of these tentpoles will be sequels, including Terminator 4, a second installment to the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, the previously reported Pink Panther sequel, as well as a few that Erik mentioned last week.

One release to rule them all is The Hobbit, to which MGM co-owns the rights (with New Line, who made the Lord of the Rings films), and which actually may end up as two releases. There is a good chance the LOTR prequel will be a blockbuster no matter how it's produced, but Sloan is really hoping that Peter Jackson can be snagged to direct. Seeing as Jackson still has The Lovely Bones and The Dam Busters on his calendar, if he were to be interested in the project, Sloan will have to wait a few years to get it started. In the meantime, he can take another look through the library and find some more films in need of easily extended into sequels. Otherwise, he will have to find someone else ... someone that fans will trust and approve. Man, how long with that take? Earlier this month, Mark reported on a New Line leak that claimed The Hobbit is scheduled for next summer, but the above information doesn't seem to make that possible.

Posted by:Zenster

#42 Zenster - no offense. Anyone who can get that many kids to read deserves - a Gulfstream V.

I heartily agree. A habit of lifelong reading is one of the most precious gifts you can give a child. Good manners and playing a musical instrument would be the others.

Posted by: Zenster 2006-09-14 23:36

#41 Comic books are a huge industry and many of today's movie-goers grew up reading comics.

Which explains a lot about society's current illiteracy problem.

For anyone who wants an amazing change of pace, try Ken Follet's (yes, that Ken Follet) "Pillars of the Earth". It is a complete departure from his usual Nazi WWII fare (i.e., about old English cathedrals). The plot is unusual in that 99% of the characters have less than one degree of separation. It, too, would also make a good movie.

Posted by: Zenster 2006-09-14 23:31

#40 We'll not mention her vast outpacing of inkstained wretches like Stephen King

For a long time following (I think) Skeleton Crew I lost my enjoyment of reading King's novels (IMO he's a much better short story writer). However, I picked up From A Buick 8 and read it cover-to-cover not just once, but several times, and then picked up Cell when it came out and did the same thing. I then reread From A Buick 8 and followed it up by rereading Cell.

The old King may be back (though I heard he had retired.

For the film list,

Dean Koontz - Lightning, Odd Thomas, Seize The Night, Fear Nothing, The Taking

Forget the hacked renditions of Koontz's Watchers novels. The films totally sucked, Koontz apparently had not editorial control, and the producers and directors did horrible things to the central characters that were totally at odds with the novels - but Koontz is IMO a better novelist than King.

Posted by: FOTSGreg 2006-09-14 23:10

#39 Talbot Mundy - The Nine Unknown

Good book for conspiracy theorists so it would appeal to both sides of the aisle.

BTW, I liked Spiderman, Spiderman II, X-Men, X-Men II, all 3 Terminator movies, Alien, Aliens (hated Aliens 3 and disliked Aliens 4), Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek: Nemesis (I had issues with most of the others), etc.

I haven't seen a movie at a theater since Star Trek: Nemesis was ending its run (obviously, I don't get out a lot and I hate going to a theater alone). DVDs are my thing, but then I don't watch a lot of those either any more (I tend to buy and watch series DVDs rather than a lot of movie DVDs - last series watched on such media was Space: Above & Beyond).

While there are books screaming for film immortality it should be remembered that the film industry exists to make money and that they primarily market to younger audiences (since us older folks have other ways to spend our free time, little of it that we have). Comic books are a huge industry and many of today's movie-goers grew up reading comics. They can identify more easily with characters they already know from their youth.

Thus, the film industry will tend to cater to their tastes.

Casablanca they ain't, but all of the films cited above made a buttload of money.

Posted by: FOTSGreg 2006-09-14 22:52

#38 kids? I've read em all

Posted by: Frank G 2006-09-14 22:50

#37 Zenster - no offense. Anyone who can get that many kids to read deserves - a Gulfstream V.

Posted by: DMFD 2006-09-14 22:47

#36 Ian Holm is at least 20 years too old to play Bilbo in The Hobbitt. He was fine for the much more aged LOTR Bilbo, but not even Hollywood makeup could make him look like a hobbitt in his prime.

Posted by: Chimble Angorong2409 2006-09-14 22:38

#35 I'd like a sequel to Firefly and Serenity

Posted by: Frank G 2006-09-14 21:26

#34 I'm also looking forward to J. K. Rowling's next book (and subsequent movie) - "Harry Potter and My New Gulfstream V".

As a capitalist and artist myself, my hat is off to Rowling. Considering that a few short years ago she was a welfare mother and has since gone on to become an author with better sales than Tom Clancy or Anne Rice, who are respectable scribblers, that's no small shakes. We'll not mention her vast outpacing of inkstained wretches like Stephen King, Danielle Steele or Sydney Sheldon. On top of it, she has accomplished this in the most difficult category of all, children's books. She has my respect.

Posted by: Zenster 2006-09-14 21:02

#33 Glad to see so many confirmations on Baxter's "The Time Ships". The nano-technology portrayed at the book's end was an outstanding plot element. Lots of good moral lessons and tons of juicy effects.

I recommend Peter Hamilton's "Night's Dawn Trilogy" to all of you. At six books, you end up reading the thing for-frickin'-eveh, but his constructs are stupendous, the plot premise is entertaining, if not well-thought-out, and by book three you are following almost 200 characters through several different worlds.

Hamilton's biotek habitats and human augmentation are not just high-tech window dressing. He brings them to play as integral plot components in everything from terraforming to merged human-computer interfaces. He also creates some predictable and logical socio-cultural varigations that, again, serve the plot well and embody important futue moral constructs. The plot arc is tremendous and his wordsmithing is rarely left wanting.

Posted by: Zenster 2006-09-14 20:53

#32 I'm also looking forward to J. K. Rowling's next book (and subsequent movie) - "Harry Potter and My New Gulfstream V".

Posted by: DMFD 2006-09-14 20:48

#31 Battle Royale, subtitles notwithstanding, was great. Freaky, but great.

Posted by: flyover 2006-09-14 20:46

#30 A movie I want to see, with all the Hollywood excess, that would actually be better than the original Japanese idea, is Battle Royale (Batoru Rowaiairu).

Sounds like "Lord of the Flies" meets "Friday the 13^th.

Posted by: Zenster 2006-09-14 20:42

#29 MGM can stick those tentpoles in their ass. Havent we seen enough sequels?

Posted by: bigjim-ky 2006-09-14 20:31

#28 My pick for a movie - anything by Neal Stephenson, but especially "Cryptonomicon".

Posted by: DMFD 2006-09-14 20:27

#27 Instapundit had a podcast interviewing Tim Minear (worked with Wheadon on Buffy, Angel, Firefly) who did a screenplay for Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Most promising - he HATED the film version of "Starship Troopers".

Posted by: DMFD 2006-09-14 20:26

#26 with very small rewrites this one could be good and pertinent:
http://www.sfreviews.net/coldallies.html

Just read it recently. Chills.

Posted by: J. D. Lux 2006-09-14 19:57

#25 Iain M. Banks: Any of his culture series; Consider Phlebas would be my preference (huge ships, wickedly deadly sentient drones, and technology to dream of)

Heinlein would cause too many heads to explode, but something like Farnham's Freehold would put the cat amongst the pigeons!

Steven Baxter's 'The Time Ships' is a great choice - the Morlock is superb and it has a reasonable good nanotechnology usage, and the collection of short stories in 'Vacuum Diagrams' would be terrific - Xeelees spanning billions of years and fighting a universe-wide war against non-baryonic life, using galaxies as building materials. Got potential! ;)

Vernor Vinge has some very good stuff too - but the aliens might be just too much for some people.

Zillions of choices and they want to do *another* Thomas Crown Affair, or God forbid, another friggin' Pink Panther - sheesh!

Posted by: Tony (UK) 2006-09-14 19:42

#24 A movie I want to see, with all the Hollywood excess, that would actually be better than the original Japanese idea, is Battle Royale (Batoru Rowaiairu).

The basic concept is that society is a mess, and the government blames -- high school students! So an entire senior class is kidnapped by the government, and put on an island to fight to the death, with only one survivor. Explosive radio collars around their necks insure they can't run away and must fight.

Maybe a Troma film. Anyway, get about 100 young American actors to portray every trite idea about racism, sexism, jocks, gangs, etc., while killing each other. All on pay-per-view, with elements of Death Race 2000, The Running Man, and today's reality shows.

Weapons are hidden all over the place, but each has limitations, like a chainsaw with only 1 oz of gasoline in it, and knives that are very sharp but very brittle. And every hour on the hour, a wheel is spun to detonate one random student's explosive collar.

Since there can be only one survivor, you have to make sure that nobody is just wounded. And if someone is injured, all their friends turn on them as an easy kill.

As backdrop, don't see America as a mess like in The Running Man, but looking much like it looks today.

Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-09-14 19:19

#23 mm... Like Idoru.

Posted by: J. D. Lux 2006-09-14 19:06

#22 Hell, I am working on a novel, that started out as a movie treatment that actually started out as a four-part blog-post called "My Dream Movie", about the greatest emigrant wagon train epic that no one has ever heard of: the party who brought wagons over the Sierra Nevada with a great deal of absolutely heroic effort, got caught in the snow, but managed to arrive with wagons intact, and two more than they started out with...
It would make a terrific movie, all the way around: epic story, with a nice variety of heroic men and feisty women, clashing personalities, inspiring teamwork, colorful mountain men, cute children,georgous scenery... and a cute bit with a dog.
And no one except for a handful of local emigrant trail enthusiasts has ever heard of them.

Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2006-09-14 19:05

#21 Oh, and all of William Gibson's work:

Burning Chrome
Neuromancer
Count Zero
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Virtual Light
Idoru
All Tomorrow's Parties
Pattern Recognition

Posted by: Zenster 2006-09-14 19:04

#20 I was actually kind of interested to see the "flyboys" movie about WWI pilots but fear it will suck or be so hollyweirded that the average movie goer will not come away w/one iota of authenticity of the age and men that put their lives on the line. That being said I'd love to see a good remake of the "blue max" or one of my personal faves "cross of iron."

I also think what the world needs now is a good and authentic true to the book version of "Atlas Shrugged" - however, I fear that hollyweird would badly distort Rand's original message ala the "sum of all fears" fiasco. Imagine if they re-did a true to book version of "Black Sunday" around Super Bowl time?

I would also love to see some great war books turned into movies - "fields of fire" by Webb or the myriad of memoirs on the Chosin Resevoir would be cool. I'd even like to see an authentic movie on the Revolutionary War (w/no lib p.c. spin) so today's generation of historically illiterate morons can get a glimpse of the cajones it took to get the U.S. started.

Posted by: Broadhead6 2006-09-14 18:00

#19 I thought bowie already did Stringer In A Strange Land?

Posted by: HalfEmpty 2006-09-14 17:55

#18 Heilein produced incredible material that could now be adapted to film. How about "Stranger in a Strange Land"? Or "I Will Fear No Evil"? Or "Time Enough For Love"? Or even some of his so-called Juvenile books.

(I gotta confess I thought "Starship Troopers" was pretty entertaining).

Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2006-09-14 17:54

#17 Ima always think Gravitys Rainbow would make a fine movie, 3-D with Buzz-A-Rama

Posted by: HalfEmpty 2006-09-14 17:54

#16 Stephen Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever would be interesting. The Ur-viles would be cool....

Posted by: CrazyFool 2006-09-14 17:32

#15 "We need guns ! Guns are power ! "

I love Planet of the Apes movies.

Posted by: J. D. Lux 2006-09-14 16:51

#14 The world cries out for more "Planet of the Apes" sequel. Forget the stupid remake, build on the earlier great/cheesy movies.

General Ursus

Posted by: borgboy 2006-09-14 16:45

#13 Steven Baxter - The Time Ships (A pastiche of HG Wells' "The Time Machine")

My current fave. That's actually a SEQUEL to "The Time Machine"
"Manifold Space" would be a good movie. (Long tho")

Posted by: J. D. Lux 2006-09-14 16:25

#12 Cheaderhead,

I do not want to see any Pournellegraphy from Hollywood. Now, some of Niven's Known Space stories would be okay.

Posted by: Eric Jablow 2006-09-14 16:12

#11 Fear not, Cheaderhead, I winced right after hitting "submit" when I remembered the Moties. Scenes of the Motie Watchmakers disassembling an entire battle cruiser before the crew's own eyes would be uproarious. I hope you enjoyed the list of titles.

Shieldwolf, you are so right about "The Sum of All Fears". I consider it to be one of the best, if not the best, Clancy novel, bar none. The movie was almost unintelligible and surgically gutted of so much exciting and critical plot material as to be criminal.

I think it is because Peter Jackson operates outside of Hollywood that his work is so good. The big studios have become so formulaic that even a hack writer can come up with better material.

Posted by: Zenster 2006-09-14 16:11

#10 The only time Hollywood makes "daring" movies is when they can spit in the face of traditional morality, denigrate Judeo-Christian ethics, or glorify deviant behavior. There has not ONE major movie since 9/11 where the villian is a Muslim terrorist, to the point of prostituting "Sum of All Fears" by making the villians white Neo-Nazis.
Daring -- my *ss!!!
Hollywood used to be the home of innovators and visionaries like Goldwyn and Busby Berkeley, now it is the home of untalented hacks. And the exceptions to that rule are noticable simply because they do have some talent, like Peter Jackson or Mel Gibson.

Posted by: Shieldwolf 2006-09-14 15:46

#9 Lord Dunsany - The King of Elfland's Daughter
William Morrison - The Well at the World's End
William Hope Hodgson - The House on the Borderland
David Brin - Sundiver or The Kiln People ("The Postman" doesn't count)
H Rider Haggard - People of the Mist or When the World Shook
Larry Niven - Ringworld
Anne Rice - The Witching Hour, Taltos and Lasher
Steven Baxter - The Time Ships (A pastiche of HG Wells' "The Time Machine")
A Merritt - The Moon Pool
Clark Ashton Smith - The City of the Singing Flame
Kim Stanley Robinson Red, Blue and Green Mars Series
Greg Bear Eon, Eternity and Legacy
Peter Hamilton Nights Dawn Trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction series)
Olivia Manning The Balkan Trilogy
Nevil Shute An Old Captivity

Add in "The Mote in God's Eye" By the afore mention Mr. Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The aliens are not just like people" and have their own motivations and secrets. Plus with the advance of CG the aliens could be depicted as described.

Posted by: Cheaderhead 2006-09-14 15:38

#8 Hollywood is not dead, they are just being slaughtered at the theater (and making money hand over fist on the DVD sales.)

The remakes and sequels may make all the headlines but those are tent-pole pictures that are easy to promote so they get the airplay. Hollywood also makes pretty daring and sometimes sketchy movies (remember Brokeback? or what about Crash?).

Posted by: rjschwarz 2006-09-14 15:30

#7 Ian Holm should play Bilbo.

Bah. Yes, that's what I meant. Didn't have enough coffee in my system.

Posted by: Jonathan 2006-09-14 15:04

#6

Hollyweird is dead.

Pretty much so. Considering that most of the recent "blockbuster" movies have been based on what? Comic books (Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Fantastic Four, X-Men ... ad infinitum), or crappy 1960s television shows (Green Acres, Lost in Space, Mission Impossible and so on). The secret of Hollywood's creative bankruptcy is unknown only to themselves.

do I really need to put up with a no story line movie just for effects?

As Job Bob Briggs would say:

"No plot to get in the way of the special effects."

When you consider the immense wealth of material that remains untapped, the incessant stream of rehashed remakes spewn forth by the studios is simply outrageous. Here are some authors whose work is simply screaming for movie treatment:

Lord Dunsany - The King of Elfland's Daughter
William Morrison - The Well at the World's End
William Hope Hodgson - The House on the Borderland
David Brin - Sundiver or The Kiln People ("The Postman" doesn't count)
H Rider Haggard - People of the Mist or When the World Shook
Larry Niven - Ringworld
Anne Rice - The Witching Hour, Taltos and Lasher
Steven Baxter - The Time Ships (A pastiche of HG Wells' "The Time Machine")
A Merritt - The Moon Pool
Clark Ashton Smith - The City of the Singing Flame
Kim Stanley Robinson Red, Blue and Green Mars Series
Greg Bear Eon, Eternity and Legacy
Peter Hamilton Nights Dawn Trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction series)
Olivia Manning The Balkan Trilogy
Nevil Shute An Old Captivity

To be blunt, you could yank an Oscar out the ass of any work Ive listed above. Hollywood has essentially turned into a closed shop of incestuous inbred morons.

Posted by: Zenster 2006-09-14 14:55

#5 This is very disappointing. There are any number of stories they could be telling without resorting to sequels and remakes.

Posted by: buwaya 2006-09-14 12:42

#4 Ian Holm should play Bilbo.

Posted by: rjschwarz 2006-09-14 12:18

#3 most of these tentpoles will be sequels, including Terminator 4, a second installment to the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, the previously reported Pink Panther sequel,

Hollyweird is dead. Hey, we made money on that last film, lets make umpteen sequels. More new ideas in console games than anything originating out of clown town. Desperation seen in putrid attempts to even clone from the games. Why sit through 90 minutes or a couple of hours of having messages shoved down your throat or another of the dozen or so movie plots that just get recycled. I can get next gen graphics at home, do I really need to put up with a no story line movie just for effects?

Posted by: Flavinter Elmins4612 2006-09-14 11:11

#2 Who'll play Frodo? Got to be Ian Holm. Or the fans will riot.

Posted by: Jonathan 2006-09-14 07:23

#1 Dang nab it! That should be: "One Prequel To Rule Them All"

Posted by: Zenster 2006-09-14 06:29

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