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Has it been two years already? - Lord of the Rings news - J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

August 08, 2000 at 02:04:35

In August 1998 Xenite.Org broke the news to the world (well, those who were reading us) that New Line Cinema had picked up financing Peter Jackson's then floundering "Lord of the Rings" project. Tolkien-Movies.Com takes a look back at a New York Post article from the same period.

The article shows us just how much has changed over the course of the last two years. Then people were expecting "unknowns" for the major roles. Elijah Wood and Sir Ian McKellen are hardly "unkowns". Hobbits were going to be normal-sized actors shrunk down via computer technology, but we've since learned that a number of body doubles have been employed along with oversized sets and props, a special cart, and more to give the visual impression of actual hobbit sizes.

Doom and Gloom sayers warned that "Dune" and "Willow" portended the failure of most fantasy movies (what happened to "The Princess Bride" and "Conan the Barbarian", both of which were successful?). But Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart have since led a brigade of top-knotch actors including Hugh Jackman to box office success in "The X-Men", a superhero fatasy movie which has broken the long string of disappointing adaptatons from comic books.

The full article is reposted here.