The Hobbit Recieved $200 Million in New Zealand Incentives

A rather odd choice in a political attack vector from the Green Party in New Zealand (think far left liberals if in the US) revealed that Warner Bros received back $200 million in benefits from the government for filming The Hobbit trilogy in the country whose total production cost was $1.1 billion. Green Party spokeswoman Julie Anne Genter said the grant was "pretty extreme" saying "...our Government should [not] be handing out hundreds of millions of dollars to film companies that are making billions of dollars."

It should be noted that governments handing out incentives to keep a business (or film company) in a certain locality is a common practice around the world. While the conservative parties around the world prefer to give tax incentives away and just hope the recipients do the right thing, true incentives are supposed to have a carrot approach of "we give you X dollars back if you do Y things." In this case New Zealand promised around a 20% back on the cost of production in return for WB filming the entire trilogy in the country and participating in various ads to promote New Zealand tourism (hence those supplementals in the home video releases).

RIP LOTR Cinematographer Andrew Lesnie

Monday Peter Jackson's long time Oscar winning cinematographer Andrew Lesnie died of a heart attack at age 59. His work with Peter Jackson goes all the way back to the Fellowship of the Ring (which one him his Oscar) and continued from there to the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy, King Kong, The Lovely Bones, The Hobbit Trilogy, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. His final film, The Water Diviner, was just released in theaters. AICN's Quint has a lovely eulogy for the famed cinematographer whose work helped create how we see Middle-Earth. Condolences to his friends and family.

Update: Peter Jackson has commented on the death of his "brother":

“Being an only child, I grew up wondering what it would be like to have a brother. It wasn’t until today, in trying to deal with the terrible news of Andrew’s passing, that I came to realise how much he had become that person for me – someone I could intrinsically love and trust – which I know now means someone who is up for all the good and the bad. Andrew was an irreplaceable part of my family and I am in total disbelief that I’ll never again hear his infectious laugh, nor benefit from his quiet wisdom, or enjoy his generous praise. Andrew created unforgettable, beautiful images on screen, and he did this time and again, because he only ever served what he believed in – he was his own artist, separate from me, but always working generously to make what we were trying to create together better. On set we developed an ability to work together using a minimum of words – a rare meeting of minds. I will always remember turning up, countless times, at five in the morning – all those quiet moments I had with him when I could step on to set and know he was there – unfazed, ready, listening, interested, more importantly – ready to catch me if I faltered. He always had my back. The more anxious I became, the more calm he would be. A solid rock in the unpredictable world we both chose to work in. After 17 years and 8 movies together, the loss of Andrew is very hard to bear.”

More Than $745 Million to Make The Hobbit Trilogy

The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that up through April, the current cost of The Hobbit trilogy is around $745 million. This total is for pre-production, principle photography, and post-production for the first two films but not the final 8 months of post-production for The Battle of Five Armies. It also isn't clear if that costs include marketing and distribution costs for the film (which are often not reported as part of the cost in making in the film). The total apparently was part of a financial report that Warner Bros. had to file so they could get around $122 million from New Zealand in a tax incentive plan to film there.

Its hard to make a "judgement" call on the cost of the film since not entirely sure if the cost includes marketing as for a film of this scale, that would be about $100 million for each for the first two films but still its starting to look like the films are costing around $250 million each to make on average rather than the expected $150 to $200 million these large special effects movies tend to cost (for comparison, each of the Transformers films landed in that range).

Regardless of where the final costs, with or without marketing expenses added, I doubt Warner Bros. is all that concerned considering the first two films have already brought in $1.98 billion at the box office. Once you add home video sales, merchandise, video games, tie-in products and anything else The Hobbit movies related it all equals to one huge windfall for the studio.

The Hobbit Trilogy Cost at $561 Million

Variety is reporting that the current cost to make The Hobbit Trilogy stands at $561 million dollars. That cost is nearly double The Lord of the Rings trilogy which was around $300 million to make. That cost only includes the initial 266 days when the plan was two films and not the recently complete two additional months of pick-ups. It sounds massive but the estimated budget for the two films was around $550 million with Warner Bros agreeing to absorb the additional cost for a third film. Basically while the number is high with a final cost being in the $200 million per film range, it really isn't that massive considering the average tent pole film nowadays costs in the $150 to $200 million range. Considering The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey made over $1 billion in worldwide box office (not including merchandising, home video sales, etc.), it seems like the $200 million per film was a very wise investment.

Third Hobbit Film Gets Title, Release Date

Warner Bros and New Line of have announced the new title and release date for the third The Hobbit film. As expected, the last film in the trilogy will keep the "There and Back Again" subtitle with a July 18, 2014 release date. The second film will now be called The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Other possible sub-titles had been Riddles in the Dark and Battle of Five Armies but neither title fit where the likely breaks will occur for each film. This does indicate that much of the second film will focus on the journey to Smaug's cave and the fight with Laketown. The third film will go from those events to build up and then depict The Battle of Five Armies which was completely skipped over in the novel as Bilbo was knocked out at the time.

The Hobbit Trilogy - Release Date
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - December 14, 2012
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - December 13, 2013
The Hobbit: There and Back Again - July 18, 2014

Details on 3rd Hobbit Undetermined

It seems that Warner Bros and MGM have a lot of confidence in Peter Jackson as they agreed to a third The Hobbit film without a budget or script. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jackson's decision to pursue a third film kicked off a large volume of meetings as they worked towards a decision.

"If anybody had been a big hindrance, it wouldn't have happened," says a source with ties to the movies. "It was such a short window of time to make this decision, if anybody had said no, it would have been two movies."

The Hobbit writing team of Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens started the ball rolling in a meeting with in early July in a meeting with executive producer Alan Horn, New Line's Toby Emmerich and Carolyn Blackwood. While the writers went back to New Zealand for pick-up shots, the three executives started working on getting a deal done. This including locking up the cast before the official announcement.

The Hobbit Trilogy Officially Announced, Possible Titles

What began as a mention from Peter Jackson at the 2012 San Diego Comic Con, then moved into talks has now become official. Jackson has posted that The Hobbit will now become a trilogy with a third film. The name has not been announced for the film or the exact release date except that it will break from tradition with a summer 2014 release date instead of the expected December 2014 date.

The third film essentially splits The Hobbit: There and Back Again into two films by adding and expanding on stories from the Lord of the Rings' Appendix. It is expected additional films will be shot in summer 2013. The announcement comes early enough that it is probable that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (out 12/14/12) could be further edited to account for the new trilogy plan.

The expectation is the third film will get the title of "The Hobbit: There and Back Again". As for the second title, Fusible has found several web domains owned by Thge Hobbit production company that reveals two potential titles. One is The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" which refers to burned, dead land around Smaug's mountain base. The other potential title, "Riddles in the Dark", is based on a chapter title from The Hobbit book that is about the riddle match between Gollum and Bilbo just before he finds the Ring. If the Riddles title is used, Journey would need a whole lot of new material to push back that meeting to the second film as it occurs early in the novel.

The Riddles title fits the other two Hobbit subtitles better but the Smaug title makes more sense based on natural big action sequence breaks in the novel for movie making purposes that matches what Jackson did for the Lord of the Rings. In that trilogy the action escalated from a battle with group of Uruk-hai (Fellowship) to Battle of Helm's Deep (Two Towers), to huge Siege of Minas Tirith (Return). While The Hobbit mostly made references to other battles, natural breaks include the Dwarves vs Elves (from the book) or White Council vs Necromancer (part of LOTR Appendices), the second could end with fight against Smaug (very brief in novel so assume more added to it) while the third film will definitely end with the Battle of Five Armies (the battle itself was skipped over in The Hobbit book, expanded a little in Appendices).

Below is PJ's note and the press release announcement of The Hobbit Trilogy.

Jackson, WB In Talks for The Hobbit Trilogy

Last week Peter Jackson floated the idea of turning The Hobbit into a trilogy by splitting The Hobbit: There and Back Again. Heat Vision blog is reporting that the idea has turned into a firm decision for Peter Jackson as he and Warner Bros have begun talks for two months of filming in the Summer of 2013. The new footage would be added to existing using material from The Lord of the Ring Appendices (something the films already do but assume Jackson wants to add even more).

WB is on board with the idea but there are financial hurdles to clear. The cast would have to be rehired, a group that is in a much stronger negotiating position than they were a year ago (can't exactly recast after all). Then there is making sure the rights are cleared for certain aspects of the story, made difficult by the Tolkien estate who loath the movies for not strictly following the books yet torn by the huge financial windfall the movies have brought them.

After that you have the cost of the cost that comes with making the film with additional cast, crew, location shoot, probably rebuilding of sets and so forth. While the cost might land slightly less than the cost of doing an entire new movie, it probably will not come cheap once the dust settles. It is safe to assume that if all works out, the third movie (with new subtitle?) would be released for December 2014.

SDCC 2012: A Third Hobbit Film?

While at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con, Peter Jackson revealed to HitFlix that he is in discussions with the studio about shooting additional footage for The Hobbit: There and Back Again. The shoot, that the studio would have to pay for, could potentially split the film into two, creating a Hobbit trilogy or it could be used as additional footage for the extended editions of the two Hobbit films. Quote and video below.

Well, we've been certainly talking to the studio about some of the material we can't film. And we've been asking them if we can do a bit more filming next year. Which I don't know what would come of that, whether that would be extended additions or not. But those discussions are on going… I'd like to shoot a bunch more material that we can't shoot. There's so much good stuff in the appendices that we haven't been able to squeeze into these movies. That's a discussion that we're having, yeah.