Peter Jackson and the other members of the team that wrote the Lord of the Rings film trilogy have signed on to pen the movie’s Hobbit prequels, Variety reported on Wednesday. The two Hobbit movies will be directed by Guillermo del Toro, who will join Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens in adapting the J.R.R. Tolkien book for the screen. The news caps off an eight-month search for a scribe to tackle the coveted task of bringing the literary classic to the big screen.
The Hobbit, written by Tolkien for his children years before the Rings trilogy, follows a young Bilbo Baggins, who finds his comfortable life turned upside down when the wizard Gandalf takes him on a journey for a hoard of treasure that involves trolls, humans, Gollum and his ring of invisibility, and a dragon named Smaug. The films will be shot simultaneously starting in late 2009 with the first movie hitting screens in 2011.
In other news about films concerning people of diminutive stature, singer-songwriter Elton John is to showcase his major hits in a new animated film called Gnomeo and Juliet, the Hollywood Reporter reported on Wednesday.
The movie is an adaptation of the Shakespearean classic, and substitutes lovers from rival clans of garden gnomes for the dueling Montagues and Capulets.
Scottish actor James McAvoy and Emily Blunt are lined up to play the heartbroken garden ornaments. The movie will be produced by Miramax and Elton John’s Rocket Pictures, and features several John classics and possibly a few new tracks.
Much as these films may be anticipated, the attention of the movie-going public is currently focused on the Venice Film Festival, which will open on Aug. 27, especially with the looming presence of the American Academy Awards over this year’s official competition. Many Oscar hopefuls and past winners are included in the selection of 21 films vying for the Leone d’Oro.
The Hollywood link coupled with the box-office success that usually accompanies films associated with the Academy Awards has helped raise the Venice Film Festival’s commercial profile, but the event, which was first held in 1932, has a long-established reputation for showcasing emerging cinema, including films from Asia and Latin America, and this year proves no exception.
Burn After Reading, perhaps the most eagerly anticipated film at this year’s Venice Film Festival, is not running in the official competition and thus won’t win any prizes in the lagoon city.
But if a recent trend is to be confirmed, the film is likely to make a splash at the next Oscars.
Made by Joel and Ethan Coen, it has the honor of opening the festival in a world premiere that will lift the lid on the latest effort by the siblings whose No Country For Old Men triumphed at the last Academy Awards.
Billed as a spy story laced with black humor, Burn After Reading boasts a high-powered Hollywood cast including George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Frances McDormand.
Last year, two films launched in Venice, Atonement and Michael Clayton, garnered seven Oscar nominations each, while in 2005 Brokeback Mountain scooped Venice’s top Leone d’Oro (Golden Lion) award and later earned Taiwanese director Ang Lee an Oscar as Best Director.
In family news, actor Matt Damon and his wife, Luciana, have become parents of a second baby girl.
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