Also — Mortonson had other film commitments, and most likely still does. Though, by accounts on the Spanish boards, the Spanish audience didn’t much like Alatriste, I’m dying to see it; each film he’s been in since LOTR, he’s been so good.

Jackson will never lack for projects. Shoot, among his options is that he’s taken out on Novik’s Tereraire.

There’s this though: going through all the extras on the extended dvd of Jackson’s Kong, it’s clear how much money and time he wasted, treating the project like his personal rec room, building entire sets and figures upon all the specs of the original to shoot — for fun — a lost / cut scene from Cooper’s Kong. Entire crews, budgets lines, etc. were devoted to what wasn’t even planned to go into the movie. They did this instead of generating soul and passion.

Love, C.

The accountants will very quickly be bringing the corporate higher ups up to speed on how much they’ll make by caving to Jackson and how much they won’t make by holding out. Anything will be worth one or two guaranteed hits.

As I understand, one movie is The Hobbit and the other is “What Strider was doing before LOTR” started, which was mentioned in some of Tolkien’s other writings. Bankable and bankable.

What I’m most surprised about is that they didn’t rush to get the movies started earlier.

“would no longer be requiring our services on The Hobbit and the prequel.”

Unless I misread this, or Jackson misspoke, it sounds like the prequel and the Hobbit movie are distinct projects. Not sure how I feel about this, but it could produce something interesting (e.g. mining the appendices and “the History of Middle Earth” for stories that lead up to LOTR).