The recent announcement that there was another Dungeons & Dragons movie in the works at Warner Bros was met with the usual enthusiasm by fans for the RPG franchise, but it seems that the usual Hollywood complications may be interfering with just how soon we see a finished film.
Confused yet? Well so is Hasbro. The toy company is claiming that they own the rights to any Dungeons & Dragons film since they bought D&D developers Wizards Of The Coast several years back. Hasbro, it turn, has a development deal with Universal Pictures, with whom they produced last year’s Battleship, also based on Hasbro-owned property. “Hasbro owns the intellectual property rights to Dungeons & Dragons, period, because of Hasbro’s acquisition of Wizards Of The Coast in 1998,” said Wayne Charness, a spokesperson for Hasbro.
However, Warner Bros. asserts that Courtney Solomon, director of the 2000 bomb called Dungeons & Dragonsstill has the rights to develop a D&D film, which he’s now doing at Warners as a producer with David Lee Johnson (Wrath of the Titans) now penning the screenplay. Meanwhile, Universal has producer Chris Morgan (five out of the six Fast & Furious movies) guiding its own adaptation of D&D.
This has all the makings of another Spider-Man or Hobbit years long legal battle over who owns the rights to what. I guess the point is don’t hold your breath for a new D&D movie for sometime in the near future.
Last week Peter Jackson hosted a live-streaming event for anyone who purchased The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on DVD/Blu-ray in where he answered fans’ questions and shared footage from the second film, The Desolation of Smaug. Unfortunately, it’s not the entire event but a six minute clip has been released online and it contains a little bit of behind the scenes filming footage. It’s our first proper look at the elves in action, featuring Legolas (Orlando Bloom), his daddy, Thandruil (Lee Pace), and the new elf not found in Tolkien’s books, Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly). There’s also a pretty hilarious and extra nerdy question from Stephen Colbert, and an anecdote where Jackson may have caught The Colbert Report giving dirty mugs to their guests. Give it a watch,
Can’t wait for Jackson to start releasing those video blogs! The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug releases later this year on December 13th.
Yesterday was the day to get your first sneak peek at the second film in The Hobbit trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug. To see it you had to have bought a Blur-ray copy of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey that came with an Ultraviolet redemption code, and then you had to remember to tune in for the livestream event . Neither of which I did, but, a lot of others bought the Blu-ray and tuned in and they of course took to the internet to share what they saw. Here’s a description of the Smaug footage screened courtesy of Cinema Blend,
The footage: Gandalf is alone in a dark and spooky tomb, with dark and spooky music backing him up. Radagast shows up and surprises him, but Radagast asks “Why am I here Gandalf? This is not a nice place to meet.” Radagast ask who is buried there, and Gandalf says “If he had a name, it’s been long since lost.” Gandalf’s staff reveals there are many other people buried in this tomb– 9, in fact. The kicker is Gandalf saying “These tombs were opened from the inside.”
Bum, bum, BUM! (Hehe, bum.) Peter Jackson adds, ”That’s a little mystery that Gandalf is exploring in The Desolation of Smaug,” and the fact nine were buried in the tomb is a pretty good clue as to whose tomb they’re in.
Cinema Blend has a real great blog of the livestream event you should go check out. The event also featured behind-the-scenes videos, not unlike Jackson’s production video blogs which he promised there’d be more of this year, as well as questions asked via video from some big names like Stephen Fry, Orlando Bloom, Dominic Monaghan, and LOTR superfan, Stephen Colbert!
The Desolation of Smaug will release this December, but until then stay tuned for those production diaries as well as our first look at some footage.
Every day the internet produces an astounding amount of goodies and gems. Most hilarious, some amusing, but all worth at least a few seconds of your time. We here at Nerd Bastards try to bring you the best bits of news and nerdery the webz has to offer, with a bit of snark thrown in. But sometimes not everything makes the cut. Monday through Friday we’ll be bringing you our inbox leftovers, our forgotten bookmarks, the nerdy bits that simply slipped through the cracks. You can submit items to Nerdy Bits by emailing us at nerdybits@nerdbastards.com.
ABOVE: Jessica Nigri is a legend in the Cosplay scene. While her costumes are many, there is none more jaw dropping than her Harley Quinn. Wawaweewa! [CBM]
Each and every week we scour the Internet for nothing but the best in nerdy art. We leave no digital stone unturned, we poke and prod every nook and cranny of the Interwebz. Why? Because we love you, and we love to bring you weekly feed of nerd art.
On with the dump!
Above: A cat version of Bilbo by Andrea Femerstrand being creeped up on by a cat version of Gollum, wonderful. The Hobbit made it’self a lot of money last year but if you redo it with cats… You’ll be purring all the way to the bank! [The Mary Sue]
Hit the jump for Deadpool mashups, Corgis and Kocks! (You’re reading that correctly) (more…)
If you want a first look at the trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug you’re going to have to go ahead and buy The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journeyafter it’s released on DVD and Blu Ray on March 19th, but before the March 24th (3PM ET) live streaming event. You’d probably be buying it anyway, but you’ve got to but it in order to get the special code that gets you into the Live Streaming Event.
You’ve also got the opportunity to submit questions on the movie’s Facebook and Vine pages for Peter Jackson‘s Q&A which follows the trailers premiere. One can expect Warner Brothers to be on top of any boot-leg versions that will pop up on the Internet and slapping Cease and Desist orders left and right, so unless you want to play tag with the Warner Brothers Legal Department all day trying to find a site with a working copy you might just want to buy it or borrow a friends code.
You could just wait . . . unless you’ve got that Hobbit itch that you can’t just scratch away.
In a surprising, yet somehow not unexpected, change of events the release for the third Hobbit film, The Hobbit: There And Back Again, has been pushed to December 17, 2014. Surprising, because I thought the July 18, 2014 release date was their way of appeasing fans who were upset it became another trilogy. Unexpected, because let’s be honest, turning the series into a trilogy means more time is needed. This is Peter fuckin’ Jackson, he is not one to rush things.
And I’m okay with that. Let the man take his time and give us a another damn good trilogy of films. I enjoyed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, but I know others felt it was sluggish and weak, so the next two need to be really solid if it has any hope of matching The Lord of the Rings.
What do you think of the added wait time? Is it asking too much of fans?
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug releases later this year on December 13th.
In the year 2000, along came an Alien-esque horror/sci-fi called Pitch Black. It featured a character called Riddick played by Vin Diesel, a convict who could see in the dark, and both the movie and the character proved popular enough that the studio greenlit writer/director David Twohy to make a follow-up film that was more epic in scope and scale, and The Chronicles of Riddick was released in 2004.
But that’s where the fairytale ends. Riddick bombed and Universal wanted no more from it other than maybe a couple of video game licenses, but that wasn’t the end of the franchise. A couple of years ago, Twohy and Diesel combined their resources to buy the rights to the franchise from Universal, and went into production on a third Riddick film, which is scheduled for release later this year.
But suppose for a minute that Chronicles of Riddick had been a smashing success, what would the follow-up might have looked like. Thanks to Comic Book Movie, that question was put to Twohy himself:
“Had Universal said to us, ‘Let’s roll over, let’s pick it up right at the end of the last movie’ and funded it, we would have ventured into the Necromonger underverse and we would have had a big The Lord of the Rings-style movie on our hands. But That didn’t happen, so cleverly Vin and I got the rights back and produced it ourselves on a smaller scale. That said, it still looks like a big movie. I think the audience will see the tip of the hat to Pitch Black, but they won’t feel claustrophobic.”
Twohy has previously talked about his original game plan in turning Pitch Black into The Hobbit basis for a Lord of the Rings-like Riddick trilogy. That’s almost a shame because I kind of like The Chronicles of Riddick and I would have like to have seen another big adventure in that universe. But perhaps the smaller in scale Riddick will suffice. I guess we’ll find out on September 6.
Every day the internet produces an astounding amount of goodies and gems. Most hilarious, some amusing, but all worth at least a few seconds of your time. We here at Nerd Bastards try to bring you the best bits of news and nerdery the webz has to offer, with a bit of snark thrown in. But sometimes not everything makes the cut. Monday through Friday we’ll be bringing you our inbox leftovers, our forgotten bookmarks, the nerdy bits that simply slipped through the cracks. You can submit items to Nerdy Bits by emailing us at nerdybits@nerdbastards.com.
Each and every week we scour the Internet for nothing but the best in nerdy art. We leave no digital stone unturned, we poke and prod every nook and cranny of the Interwebz. Why? Because we love you, and we love to bring you weekly feed of nerd art. On with the dump!
Above: A tribute to the classic Little Golden Books of a youth! Illustrator Rosemary Travale has created a Little Tolkien Book. Turning the The Hobbit into a series of children’s books, Rosemary did what many thought was impossible -making Martin Freeman even more adorable. [The Mary Sue]
Hit the jump for Wonder Woman, Earthworm Jim and more… (more…)
Advertisement
Like Us
Follow Us