Well behaved hobbits don't join unions

31 March 2010

John Howell

Sir Ian Mckellen, the excellent British actor who played the pivotal role of the wizard Gandalf in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, has offered some insightful remarks concerning recent strike action by unions in a British Airways dispute. According to David Langford's Ansible, on Absolute Radio, Mckellen remarked that "Nice well-behaved hobbits don't join unions." For those of you familiar with the Lord of the Rings novels, nice well-behaved hobbits were easy meat for the evil wizard Saruman and his hoards of Orcs. I think it's clear which side of the dispute he's come down on!

In other hobbit related news, it appears that getting The Hobbit movie production moving forward is not happening as fast as could be expected (given the success of the first three Lord of the Rings movies and that all the production infrastructure is already in place in New Zealand). According to TheOneRing.net, Peter Jackson, speaking at Comic-Con in June last year, said that the first script was only weeks away from completion. However, even though the script is certainly complete by now, MGM is undergoing financial difficulties which may slow everything down.

According to TheOneRing.net, they have received from an "absolutely reliable source" information that MGM's financial situation is the reason the first of the new movies isn't well into filming. MGM, the studio behind the James Bond franchise and about 4,000 other titles, is reported to be $3.7 billion in debt, but holds the distribution rights for two Hobbit films that are under contract to be made by Warner Bros. The two studios have an agreement in place to produce and distribute the films but financial difficulties for MGM, including the potential sale of the studio and its holdings, including rights to the films based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien, has caused uncertainty.

While Mckellen suggested filming was to start in July last year, this didn't happen and there has been no official word on a filming start date. What appears certain though is that the two films will not be green lit from the studios until MGM's financial situation is resolved.

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