The Lord Of The Rings Archive News Page 5

September 24, 2002 New Lord of the Rings: Two Towers of Power

Last week New Line Cinema held two sneak previews of 16 minutes of assembled footage of The Two Towers which featured a look at some new characters and a glimpse of a giant war scene. It was all very impressive, especially the new computer-generated character Gollum, who puts Jar Jar Binks to shame.

Two Towers, from what we saw, is more character driven than the first film. It feels a little amped up
and that may be the result of the re-shoots this past summer. The scenes we saw had incredible energy even if you don’t know a word from the book (and that would include this reader, whose only interest in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books extended to The Fellowship of the Ring).

But nothing was more impressive than New Line’s Mark Ordesky’s knowledge of the entire Tolkien canon. When he finished explaining it to us, we were all afraid there’d be a quiz. Later Ordesky, executive producer of the trilogy and the man who shares credit with director Peter Jackson for making it all work, admitted: “I read the books about 12 times since I was a teenager.”

Bernard Hill, the British actor who plays Theoden, the king of Rohan, said that when the actors arrived in New Zealand this summer for re-shoots, Ordesky amazed them with the same speech. “We couldn’t believe it,” said Hill, who attended the preview with actors John Rhys-Davies and Miranda Otto.

New Line will open Towers on Dec. 18, with a built-in audience.
The first installment has made about a billion dollars worldwide so far.

September 18, 2002 Romance In Two Towers?

The IMDB news Web site reported a rumor that Peter Jackson’s upcoming film adaptation of the second Lord of the Rings book will play up a love triangle among key characters.

The upcoming sequel film, The Two Towers, is rumored to heighten the romantic tension among Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Arwen (Liv Tyler) and a character new to the film series, Eowyn (Miranda Otto), the site reported.

Citing an anonymous source, the site reported that there will be “plenty of tension between the three.”
The Two Towers opens Dec. 13.

September 14, 2002 Kiwis Lord it up

New Zealand is the hot long-haul destination, posting a record 228,000 visitors from Britain in the year to June. This is 8.9% up on 2001 and has been achieved in the face of a slump elsewhere in such long-haul trips.

Much of this is attributed to the “Hobbit Effect” – Lord Of The Rings was filmed in various New Zealand locations. The America’s Cup yacht races, which start in October, are expected to focus further attention on Auckland through the New Zealand summer.

Australia attracted 618,500 visitors in the same period – virtually the same figure as in the previous 12 months.

September 3, 2002 Hackers claim Lord of the Rings leak

Pre-release copies of Two Towers ‘already on the web’ . Four months before its official release, hackers claim that the next installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy may already be available on the internet.

The Two Towers is said to be circulating on a couple of CDs among the hacking community in Bulgaria, and there have been rumours of another copy existing on a US hacker’s website.
But a spokesman for film company AOL Time Warner has issued a statement expressing serious doubt that a real copy is available, as a finished print of the movie has not yet been made.

The company pointed out that no evidence has yet been found of any website containing the file.
But file traders are convinced that they have the real movie, which is set for release in December.
One Bulgarian hacking cell even claimed that it had a waiting list for it. “It came in on Sunday and we are trying to get more copies made,” one of the hackers said. Pre-release internet leaks have recently included DVD rips of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and Spider-man.

August 27, 2002 Lord Of The Rings hits top note

Lord Of The Rings has beaten a host of cinema classics to be voted the greatest film soundtrack of all time.
It came ahead of such memorable movie scores as Doctor Zhivago, Gone With The Wind and Chariots of Fire.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was released only last year but it topped the poll carried out by Classic FM.
Star Wars was voted in second place, followed by Schindler’s List, The Empire Strikes Back and Gladiator. Lord of the Rings composer Howard Shore, who picked up an Oscar for the soundtrack, said he was “thrilled” with the results in the poll of more than 52,000 listeners.
Meanwhile the year’s other wizard release, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, made it to number 14.

That score was the work of American John Williams, who was the most popular composer on the list and the man behind the famous Star Wars theme.
Three of his soundtracks were in the top 50 and he has a total of nine in the top 30, including ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Superman.

British composer John Barry merited three mentions on the list – for Out Of Africa, Dances With Wolves and the 1968 film The Lion In Winter.
Lawrence of Arabia is at number 8, Doctor Zhivago at number 11, The Magnificent Seven at number 15 and Brief Encounter at number 18.
The oldest film on the list is Gone With The Wind, released in 1939, with a score by Max Steiner.

August 3, 2002 IGN FotR DVD Review

From the original Internet preview oh so long ago, it had been a torturous wait that was made even worse a few short months before the premiere of the film.

Earlier that year, we had the chance to view the twenty minutes of footage that New Line cut together for the Cannes’ Film Festival.
It featured a montage of never-before-seen footage and dialog leading up to the Moria sequence where for the first time we were able to see fully complete effects sequences and listen to Howard Shore’s completed score.

The Moria sequence was complete from Balin’s Tomb all the way up to the first reveal of the Balrog’s head. New Line decided to torment viewers even more by then showing five minutes of footage from both The Two Towers and Return of the King, which ended with a shot of Frodo and Sam at the Cracks of Doom right as Frodo is about to toss in the Ring…

Nonetheless, the footage renewed our hopes that Fellowship wouldn’t be a disaster. The Hobbit effects worked, the score was very fitting, and the whole thing seemed perfect.

So, after three hours in that giant IMAX auditorium on that cold December night I was fully ready to sit there another six hours to see both The Two Towers and Return of the King right then. But, I knew that it would be another year until the second installment, and I knew that the next year would be a torturous wait.

And it has been.

August 1, 2002

Peter Jackson is whetting the appetites of fans around the world for the next chapter of THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, THE TWO TOWERS. In a recent interview, Jackson revealed the production has re-shot 25 minutes of the film, as away of amping up the action and adding to the creepiness of Gollum’s froggy presence.

Saruman Signing posted on August 1, 2002

In layman’s terms, that means Christopher Lee, who plays the wizard Saruman in Lord of the Rings, will be signing copies of The Lord of the Rings DVD at London’s premier comic store The Forbidden Planet that day.

‘It’s first come, first served, unfortunately,’ an employee told Empire Online today about the signing, which promises to bring hordes of Rings fans to the relatively tiny shop in central London. ‘He’s only here for two hours, so it’s going to be a little pushed.’

If you fancy your chances, get down to the shop on London’s New Oxford Street next Tuesday between 5pm and 7pm to proffer your copy of the DVD to Sauron’s minion.

August 1, 2002 FotR Best Selling DVD…. Ever?

“This will be the biggest DVD release of this year and possibly the biggest DVD release ever for us,” says David Lang, president and CEO of CD World, a chain with 10 stores in New Jersey.

The best selling DVD since the format became popular is “Shrek,” but “Rings” poses the first real threat to the title since its release last year.

Yesterday, “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings” was at the top of Amazon.com’s 100 best selling DVD list – even though it’s not available for another week. There have been some sightings of smaller video stores in Queens and Brooklyn selling the film early, against the studio’s wishes.

“We’re ready to match all demand at the street release date as well as in the coming weeks,” said Justine Brody, vice president marketing and promotions for New Line Home Entertainment.

July 28, 2002

The job at the moment is on the special effects for The Two Towers, the second part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Director Peter Jackson must have a finished print with New Line Cinema in less than 10 weeks, in time for a Christmas release.

When New Line executives visited three weeks ago to check on progress, they approved Houston’s request for “more horsepower” – an increase in the size of the render wall, the racks of processors which add texture and shading to the animations.

June 21, 2002 Preview of The Two Towers Video
Game

USA Today reports: Lord of the Rings fans will be able to take up arms against Sauron and his army of orcs with the arrival of The Two Towers from Electronic Arts (for Sony PlayStation 2 and Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance). The game is set to hit stores just before Dec. 18, when theaters begin showing the second installment of Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy.

Jackson and the film crew at New Line Cinema are working closely with the game’s developers to create as cinematic an experience as possible. The likenesses and voices of actors (such as Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn) are being used, as are music, sounds, and digital effects and settings from The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. “It will look, sound and feel the same as the movies, but play like a great game,” says EA executive producer Neil Young.