The cast of Peter Jackson‘s two Hobbit films, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again, is huge. Like, really, tremendously huge. They actors are all listed at the bottom of the post, but the point is that, after months of shooting, the cast isn’t quite big enough. Jackson has just added the man who will seemingly be the last on the roster: Scottish actor and comedian Billy Connolly. He’ll play Dain Ironfoot, a Dwarf warrior. Read More »
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The Lord of the Rings saved the West Memphis Three. It sounds like a crazy statement but one of the many things a viewer takes from Amy Berg‘s breathtakingly detailed and effective documentary West of Memphis is that co-producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh spent a lot of time, and even more money, to assist in the legal defense, new investigations and expert testimony which eventually lead to the 2011 release of the West Memphis Three, three men accused of murdering three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993. Jackson and Walsh got a lot of their money from The Lord of the Rings so, put two and two together, and the statement seems less crazy.
Jumping off where Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky took off with their Paradise Lost documentary trilogy, Berg’s film makes Purgatory, the latest of Berlinger and Sinofsky’s movies, feel elementary. It expands greatly on all of the revelations on that film, and provides new ones of its own that were filmed as recently as January 12, 2012. Whereas the first Paradise Lost was the definitive documentary on the beginning of this massive, controversial case, West of Memphis is the definitive documentary on its conclusion. Read More »
When we started to hear about West of Memphis, the new documentary about the West Memphis Three (Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley) produced by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, and directed by Amy Berg, the big question was: what will this movie offer?
The movie was born out of an investigation funded by Jackson and Walsh that seeks to find the real identity of the killer who ended the lives of three young boys in 1993. And it turns out the film might have an ace up its sleeve. While the first press screening is going on right now in Sundance, a press release has been sent out announcing that the movie reveals testimony from three witnesses who bolster accusations that the murders were really committed by a man named Terry Hobbs.
Hobbs was the stepfather of one of the murder victims, and has long been linked to the case via DNA evidence. His ex-wife Pamela Hobbs, the birth mother of one of the victims, has called for the case to be re-opened, and has proclaimed her belief that the West Memphis Three are innocent.
The info is after the break. Read More »
Posted on Monday, January 16th, 2012 by Angie Han
Technically, I guess the PG-13 Grown Ups doesn’t really qualify as a kids’ film, so its sequel probably won’t either. But since that movie centered around five grown men acting like children, I’ll say that that this Sequel Bits is all about the young’uns. After the jump:
- Jessica Chastain and Bryan Cranston somehow cram Madagascar 3 into their very, very busy schedules
- Steven Spielberg talks The Adventures of Tintin 2 and 3
- To the surprise of no one, Antonio Banderas would like to do a Puss in Boots 2
- Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups 2 gets a summer 2013 release date
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Yesterday we showed you the poster for West of Memphis, the West Memphis Three documentary produced by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh and directed by Amy Berg. At the time I wondered what new ground this doc would find when the story has been so thoroughly covered by Joel Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Paradise Lost films.
Now there is a lively trailer for West of Memphis, which will premiere at Sundance. The trailer shows a bit of the specific approach the film takes to telling the story of the West Memphis Three and the murder trial that swirled around them. The movie is part of an effort to exonerate the trio and find the real killer of three young boys who were murdered in 1993. Read More »
When the West Memphis Three (Jason Baldwin, Jesse Misskelley Jr., and Damien Echols) were freed last year, we learned that Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh had been paying for investigations into the case for which the three were convicted. The murders for which the WM3 went to prison are widely believed to have been committed by other parties, and Jackson and Walsh bankrolled DNA tests and other efforts to find the real perpetrators.
Around the same time, in 2008, they started producing a documentary called West of Memphis, directed by Amy Berg, about their investigation and its findings. That film was announced in December, and will premiere soon at Sundance. Jackson has now shared the first poster for the film, designed by the artist Jock. Read More »
Posted on Friday, December 23rd, 2011 by Angie Han
J.R.R. Tolkien fans already got a nice holiday gift earlier this week when the gorgeous first trailer for The Hobbit was released on Tuesday, but Peter Jackson wasn’t done playing Santa. The director took to his Facebook wall a couple of days ago to promise an additional “Christmas treat” to mark the ten-year anniversary of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring as well as promote the two Hobbit films, and finally revealed his big surprise — the fifth production video from the set of The Hobbit — earlier today. (Which I think technically makes it a Festivus present rather than a Christmas one, but we’ll let that slide.) Watch the video after the jump.
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Ten years ago this week The Fellowship of the Ring was released. Peter Jackson‘s first Tolkien adaption silenced a great many naysayers who said J.R.R. Tolkien‘s novels could never be properly translated to film. It also fostered a mainstream interest in fantasy movies that continues a decade later.
The development of a film based on Tolkien’s original Middle-Earth novel, The Hobbit, was the subject of speculation as soon as Jackson started work on The Lord of the Rings. Actually making the movie was a terrifically complicated process that involved rights deals, the financial solvency of MGM, a long period of development under original director Guillermo del Toro, and the eventual return of Peter Jackson to the director’s chair.
Now the first teaser trailer — a long teaser, at that — has been released for the first of two films based on the novel. Get the first look at footage from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, after the break. Read More »
