hopeless romantics
Never saying never might be the smart play for Guillermo Del Toro, who once went off so memorably on the Lord of the Rings franchise ("I was never into heroic fantasy. At all. I don't like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits — I've never been into that at all. I don't like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff") only to commit to directing the godforsaken Hobbit two-fer less than two years later. Alas, he's at it again this month in an interview with Complex Magazine, apparently setting himself up for his first stab at romantic comedy after he returns from New Zealand:
"No way. Sleepless in Seattle can go fuck itself," [Del Toro] said. "Monsters are the most beautiful creatures in the universe. I have no interest in everyday life, except through a twisted mirror."
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middling earth
Our
dissatisfaction at Friday's news that
Guillermo del Toro would inherit
the Hobbit reins from
Peter Jackson met with a mix of scorn and curiosity over the weekend. "Pony up an alternative, Cochise," wrote
a commenter. "Destroy those two GENIUSES and all we will be left with is Lucas and Spielberg. And that is not a world I wish to live in." Us neither! That said, if the Laws of Hollywood Franchises dictate that this goddamned movie
must exist, we can think of at least five talented directors off the tops of our heads whom we'd prefer over del Toro, Jackson or any of the other usual fanboy fantasy suspects. Tell us your own ideal hires after the jump.
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middling earth
There's been much to-do over the last day about
Peter Jackson's
hiring of
Guillermo del Toro to direct the two-part
Lord of the Rings prequel
The Hobbit. Among our favorite dissenting opinions belongs to
Salon critic Andrew O'Hehir, who pulls out his Cannes '06 interview notebook to look up del Toro's sentiment at the time: "I was never into heroic fantasy. At all. I don't like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits — I've never been into that at all. I don't like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff." Our sister blog Gawker
doesn't like del Toro's selection either, but we're optimistic this is a perfect match for everyone because
The Lord of the Rings,
The Hobbit,
J.R.R. Tolkien and Guillermo del Toro
all fucking suck. Does it really matter which A-list fantasy/horror fanboy with $300 million of Warner Bros.' money and Jackson's imprimatur is going to spend four years jacking off behind a camera in New Zealand? It's going to be unwatchable. Not only that, but didn't Jackson
make this movie three times already? Here's our exclusive script excerpt: "EXT. FOREST — DAY. Bilbo Baggins furrows his brow. Visual effects and soundtrack happen. INT. CASTLE — NIGHT. Ian McKellen cameo. More effects. EXT. FOREST — DAY. The end." It's a hit! [
Salon]
Everybody's Suing Everybody Day
continues! Accusing
New Line of employing the kind of "Hollywood accounting" practices that could secret billions of dollars of
Lord of the Rings revenues in suspicious budget lines like "Hair/Make-up Hobbitscaping Services," "Elijah Wood Eye-Desparkling Effects," and "Hide all profits here! Sssssh!," representatives from J.R.R. Tolkein's charitable trust and the author's heirs have filed suit against the studio, looking to be paid their claimed $150 million share of the
LOTR bounty: "I think that it's going to be extremely interesting to see how New Line is going to explain to a jury that these films grossed $6 billion and yet by their calculations the creators' heirs are not going to get even a single penny." Given that New Line was rumored to have paid previous profit-seeker
Peter Jackson a
$40 million settlement to keep their two
The Hobbit films on track, Tolkien's heirs can probably convince the company to comb through their allegedly cooked books to shake loose eight-figures' worth of make-nice money before things devolve into ugliness. [
NY Times]
Yesterday, there was much rejoicing in Fanboy Middle Earth following the
announcement that director
Peter Jackson would return to produce two
The Hobbit movies for
New Line after settling his dispute over the
Lord of the Rings profits the filmmaker said the studio owed him. But how much money did it take for Jackson to rescind his onetime pledge to "feed the greedy [NL co-chairman]
Bob Shaye's lifeless body to a hungry Gollum and toss what's left of his well-gnawed remains into the hottest volcano in Mordor before I begin to even think about doing another hairy-midget flick"? About $40 million, according to two people involved. [
NY Times]
Defamer
