Ewan McGregor is a veteran of three Star Wars manifestations and has indicated he’d go for a fourth round should he be asked by the franchise’s new owners. McGregor played a young Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace , Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and he said he’d be up for a return to the galaxy far, far away once more. “I guess, yeah, of course,” said McGregor to Digital Spy about a potential return. “If they need me, yeah, I’d be happy [to go back].” Speaking with Moviefone earlier this year, McGregor said that his experience was a good one and that Star Wars had gained him some young fans. “It was great to be involved in – to be in that franchise and that legend of Star Wars is really satisfying. It’s nice. Children speak to me about it – before then there hadn’t been many films that I made that children would have watched. I’ve always been very happy about it.” Disney bought Lucasfilm in October for $4.05 billion in a surprising high-profile purchase and is planning to make Episodes VII, VIII and IX as a result. [ Sources: Huffington Post , Digital Spy ]
Middle-earth may have some perils of the stomach variety if Kiwi viewers are an indication of things to come. Early screenings of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in New Zealand have left some movie-goers feeling nauseous. The latest anticipated epic from Peter Jackson had its world premiere Down Under last week and has already begun attracting audiences to the film that was shot using high-speed 3-D technology. Some have complained that the high frame rate, which screens at 48 frames per second compared to the traditional 24 frames per second, has resulted in dizziness, nausea and even migraines for some fans, according to The New Zealand Herald . [ ‘The Hobbit’ At 48 FPS: A High Frame Rate Fiasco? ] Director Peter Jackson trumpeted the sped up frame rate at the premiere for bringing “enhanced clarity and smoothness.” “You have to hold your stomach down and let your eyes pop at first to adjust,” tweeted one N.Z. fan. Jackson received mixed reaction when he teased footage of the Hobbit at Comic-Con last Summer though it met with some complaints that it looked “too real.” “48 frames absolutely helps 3D because suddenly you’re removing a substantial amount of the motion blur that you get at 24 . Your eyes get a much smoother experience,” Jackson wrote on the Directors Guild of America website earlier this fall. “Frame rate is a very similar thing to CinemaScope. It’s a choice. It opens up another toolbox for filmmakers.” [ ‘The Hobbit’ 3-D Early Review: Back Again, But Not Quite There ] This certainly won’t be the first time a movie has caused audience squeamishness and discomfort. Avatar and Breaking Dawn caused some fans to complain of sickness and they certainly did not result in lower box office totals. Even more dramatic, the New York Film Festival debut of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction back in 1994 famously caused one audience member to pass out (though it was rumored he had suffered a heart attack – later proven untrue) which caused an interruption in the screening until paramedics arrived to help. Then the screening continued. [ Sources: ABC News , New Zealand Herald ] Read more on The Hobbit and Peter Jackson’s 48 FPS . Follow Brian Brooks on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The biggest question surrounding Peter Jackson ‘s Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , has nothing to do with its strength of story, its Oscar chances, or whether or not Tolkien fans will embrace yet another uber-ambitious adaptation of their beloved fantasy world, but rather: How does it look? Specifically, how will Jackson’s 48 frames-per-second gamble play after months of talk and one particularly disastrous Cinema Con debut ? I’ll tell you this: The grumblings and rumblings after my screening of The Hobbit – in bold, daring, frustrating 48 frames-per-second 3-D – were decidedly not raves. And that’s a very bad sign for Jackson & Co. One colleague couldn’t believe how poor the 48 fps presentation looked, insisting – or hoping, more like it – that something must have been wrong with the projection. Jackson’s big, game-changing crusade for a frame rate that would part the heavens and open humankind’s hearts and minds and brains to a new way of watching film couldn’t possibly look so unpleasant. Could it? I was curious if, back in April when The Hobbit ‘s 48 fps preview bombed at Cinema Con, the journalists and industry folk who recoiled from the hyper-clarity of the picture onscreen were just overreacting to Jackson’s new cinematic order. “After a minute or two of adjusting,” wrote The New York Daily News’ Ethan Sacks in his embargo-skirting first review , “the higher resolution is eye-popping, similar to discovering HD television for the first time.” HD TV did look rather freaky at first, I’ll give him that, and there’s a shared quality of too much visual information that The Hobbit ‘s 48 fps shares with high-def television. But it didn’t take a few minutes of adjusting to get used to it; even two hours and 40 minutes later my brain was rejecting the look of it. It felt like watching daytime soaps in HD, terrible BBC broadcasts, or Faerie Tale Theater circa 1985, only in amazingly sharp clarity and with hobbits. Part of the problem is there’s too much detail in every frame that the magical filter of cinema that makes most 24 fps film so pleasing to the eye is gone; every prop on a set too clear, and even a performance by someone like the very fine Ian McKellen looks embarrassingly, unnaturally theatrical. Moving images, especially walking Hobbits and dwarves – not as much the CG creatures, for what it’s worth – flit at odd speeds that just never look right. With the exception of a handful of scenes, mostly enhanced by CG vs. shot on interior sets, the 48 fps had me imagining how gorgeous everything might look in 24fps. Those who’ve seen it in 24fps seem much happier with the visual presentation, even if 3-D feels superfluous. As Bilbo made his way along his adventure through Middle Earth, the look of The Hobbit and the accelerated barrage of information prompted a flurry of other films and shows to pop into mind, none of them flattering comparisons. Here, in no particular order, are some of them: Fraggle Rock Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood of Make-Believe Shining Time Station Star Trek colony planets The opening POV shot of Dinosaurs (On the plus side, The Hobbit also inspired me to Google “Galadriel-Gandalf fan fiction,” which I guarantee will be a thing after The Hobbit comes out.) As early reviews continue to hit the web, it appears that I’m not in the minority on the frame rate issue. 48 fps may be D.O.A. even before The Hobbit opens in wide release on December 14. Maybe that’s a good thing; save your dollars and see it in regular ol’ 24 fps. The future may well be 48, but it hasn’t arrived yet. READ MORE: ‘The Hobbit’ 3-D Early Review: Back Again, But Not Quite There ‘Hobbit’ First Review: 48 FPS Is ‘Eye-Popping,’ But Watch Out For The Jar Jar Binks Of ‘LOTR’ The Hobbit 48 FPS Preview Divides Audiences at CinemaCon Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Man of Steel enjoyed one of the more bonkers receptions at this weekend’s Comic-Con, culminating in — what else? — a teaser poster just for its San Diego coming-out party. They’ve thought of everything. It doesn’t reveal much of Henry Cavill’s Superman, however, which led Movieline pal Grace Randolph to hit up costume illustrator Phillip Boutte for more details about the look of Zack Snyder’s upcoming blockbuster. Click through for the poster and video.
After bringing 12 minutes of The Hobbit to Comic-Con — where Peter Jackson purposefully did not present footage in the 48 frames per second/3-D presentation that perplexed audiences at CinemaCon — the Lord of the Rings filmmaker spoke further about his desire to explore even more ground in the fantasy universe created by J.R.R. Tolkien. One possibility may be a third Hobbit film culled from Tolkien’s expansive LOTR notes and appendices, though Jackson admitted that the author’s posthumously published Silmarillion might present more of a challenge. Familiar faces filled the screen in the Hobbit preview, which gave Comic-Con fans glimpses of Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel, Ian McKellan’s Gandalf, Orlando Bloom’s Legolas, and new cast member Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins in the two-parter, which will hit screens in December 2012 and 2013. Speaking with press, Jackson acknowledged his choice to present the footage in 2-D rather than the 48 fps that earned mixed-to-negative buzz at CinemaCon. “We have to try to figure out ways to make this cinematic experience much more spectacular, more immersive,” he said. “But you know, Hall H isn’t the place to do it.” Neither is showing just ten minutes of footage in 48 fps an adequate way to introduce the format to thousands of uninitiated fans who may not even be used to big screen 3-D, he insisted. CinemaCon seems to have also taught Jackson not to let 48 fps overshadow the actual film at hand. “I didn’t want to repeat the CinemaCon experience where literally people see this reel and all they write about is 48 frames a second. That doesn’t do us any good. It doesn’t do 48 fps any good. To accurately judge that, you really need to sit down and watch the entire film.” Meanwhile, Jackson and collaborators Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh are in the early stages of looking at a potential third Hobbit film based on the vast 125-page appendices in Tolkien’s Return of the King , some of which was used to flesh out The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again . “Philippa and Fran and I have been talking to the studio about the other things we haven’t been able to shoot and seeing if we can possibly persuade them to do a few more weeks of shooting — possibly more than a few weeks, actually — a bit of additional shooting next year,” Jackson said. “There are other parts of the story that we’d like to tell that we haven’t had the chance to tell yet.” Jackson looked to the additional Tolkien notes to fill in certain character backstories and events missing from the primary texts. “For instance, in The Hobbit where Gandalf mysteriously disappears for chapters on end and it’s not really explained in any detail where he’s gone, much later Tolkien fleshed those out in these appendices,” he explained. “It was altogether a lot more dark and more serious than what was written in The Hobbit . And I do want to make a series of movies that run together so if any crazy lunatic wants to watch them all together in a row, there will be a consistency of tone.” A completist’s cinematic tour of the LOTR world might include Tolkien’s Silmarillion , a collection of universe-building mythology edited and posthumously published by Tolkien’s son Christopher in 1977. The problem, Jackson says, is in who controls the rights to the work. “ The Silmarillion is the big volume, but that’s owned by the Tolkien estate,” he said. “It’s not owned by Warner Bros. or MGM — and I don’t think the Tolkien estate are very fond of these movies, so I wouldn’t expect to see The Silmarillion any time soon.” Read more from Comic-Con 2012 here. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Nobody wants to call it a “remake,” but if it walks like the original source material and quacks like the original source material… Matt Reeves ( Cloverfield ), who handily re-imagined John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel Let the Right One In into the 2010 film Let Me In , is writing and will direct a script based on Ray Nelson’s short story 8 O’C lock in the Morning , which was previously adapted into John Carpenter’s 1988 horror comedy They Live . Reeves’ version, it’s noted, will not feature alien-spotting sunglasses and probably won’t star “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. See, totally different! [ Deadline ]
Writing from the set of The Hobbit , Peter Jackson took to Facebook Monday to blog his thoughts on filming at 48 frames per second — the increased frame rate championed by folks like James Cameron, who will use it to blow minds in Avatar 2 and 3 . Jackson is currently filming The Hobbit in 3-D at 48 fps instead of the industry standard 24 fps, and as a result, the Lord of the Rings follow-up will be the first wide release to pave the way into a brave new digital world of filmmaking — whether or not theaters around the world are ready for it.
