Showing posts with label The Hobbit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Hobbit. Show all posts
Saturday, September 24, 2011
A Public Service Announcement from The Konformist
The hobbit you just called fat? He’s skipping 2nd breakfast. The dwarf woman you called ugly? She spends hours braiding her beard so you can differentiate her from a dwarf man. The Uruk-Hai you just killed? He’s been abused by Saruman. See that Gollum creature with the gangly limbs&large eyes? For 500 years the Ring poisoned his mind. That Elf you just made fun of for crying? She just lost her wizard friend to a Balrog. Put this as your status if you’re against bullying in Middle-Earth.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
How a hobbit is rewriting the history of the human race
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/feb/21/hobbit-rewriting-history-human-race
How a hobbit is rewriting the history of the human race
The discovery of the bones of tiny primitive people on an Indonesian island six years ago stunned scientists. Now, further research suggests that the little apemen, not Homo erectus, were the first to leave Africa and colonise other parts of the world, reports Robin McKie
Robin McKie
The Observer, Sunday 21 February 2010
A painting of what researchers believe Homo floresiensis may have looked like. Illustration: Peter Schouten
It remains one of the greatest human fossil discoveries of all time. The bones of a race of tiny primitive people, who used stone tools to hunt pony-sized elephants and battle huge Komodo dragons, were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004.
The team of Australian researchers had been working in a vast limestone cavern, called Liang Bua, in one of the island's remotest areas, when one scientist ran his trowel against a piece of bone. Carefully the group began scraping away the brown clay in which pieces of a tiny skull, and a little lower jaw, were embedded.
This was not any old skull, they quickly realised. Although small, it had special characteristics. In particular, it had adult teeth. "This was no child, but a tiny adult; in fact, one of the smallest adult hominids ever found in the fossil record," says Mike Morwood, of Australia's University of Wollongong and a leader of the original Flores expedition team.
The pieces of bone were carefully wrapped in newspaper, packed in cardboard boxes and then cradled on the laps of scientists on their journey, by ferry and plane, back to Jakarta. Then the pieces of skull, as well as bones from other skeletons found in Liang Bua, were put together.
The end result caused consternation. These remains came from a species that turned out to be only three feet tall and had the brain the size of an orange. Yet it used quite sophisticated stone tools. And that was a real puzzle. How on earth could such individuals have made complex implements and survived for aeons on this remote part of the Malay archipelago?
Some simply dismissed the bones as the remains of deformed modern humans with diseases that had caused them to shrink: to them, they were just pathological oddities, it was alleged. Most researchers disagreed, however. The hobbits were the descendants of a race of far larger, ancient humans who had thrived around a million years ago. These people, known as Homo erectus, had become stranded on the island and then had shrunk in an evolutionary response to the island's limited resources.
That is odd enough. However, new evidence suggests the little folk of Flores may be even stranger in origin. According to a growing number of scientists, Homo floresiensis is probably a direct descendant of some of the first apemen to evolve on the African savannah three million years ago. These primitive hominids somehow travelled half a world from their probable birthplace in the Rift Valley to make their homes among the orangutans, giant turtles and rare birds of Indonesia before eventually reaching Flores.
It sounds improbable but the basic physical similarity between the two species is striking. Consider Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old member of Australopithecus afarensis. She had a very small brain, primitive wrists, feet and teeth and was only one metre tall, but was still declared "the grandmother of humanity" after her discovery in Ethiopia in 1974. Crucially, analysis of Lucy's skeleton shows it has great similarities with the bones of H. floresiensis, although her species died out millions of years ago while the hobbits hung on in Flores until about 17,000 years ago. This latter figure is staggeringly close in terms of recent human evolution and indicates that long after the Neanderthals, our closest evolutionary relatives, had disappeared from the face of the Earth around 35,000 years ago, these tiny, distant relatives of Homo sapiens were still living on remote Flores.
The crucial point about this interpretation is that it explains why the Flores people had such minuscule proportions. They didn't shrink but were small from the start – because they came from a very ancient lineage of little apemen. They acquired no diseased deformities, nor did they evolve a smaller stature over time. They were, in essence, an anthropological relic and Flores was an evolutionary time capsule. In research that provides further support for this idea, scientists have recently dated some stone tools on Flores as being around 1.1 million years old, far older than had been previously supposed.
The possibility that a very primitive member of the genus Homo left Africa, roughly two million years ago, and that a descendant population persisted until only several thousand years ago, is one of the more provocative hypotheses to have emerged in anthropology during the past few years," David Strait of the University of Albany told Scientific American recently. This view is backed by Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London. "We are still grappling with what this discovery has done for our thinking and our conventional scenarios."
In addition, Mike Morwood says he has now uncovered stone tools on nearby Sulawesi. These could be almost two million years old, he believes, which suggests the whole region was populated by very ancient humans for a startlingly long part of human prehistory. "This is going to put the cat among the pigeons," Morwood says.
However, it is the hobbits' similarity to ancient African apemen that provides the most compelling evidence for their ancient origins. In the Journal of Human Evolution, a team led by Debbie Argue of the Australian National University, recently reported that analysis of H. floresiensis shows they most closely resemble apelike human ancestors that first appeared around 2.3 million years ago in Africa. In other words, their stock may be not quite as old as Lucy's but probably comes from a hominid, known as Homo habilis, that appeared on the evolutionary scene not long after Lucy's species disappeared. Homo habilis's features now seem to match, most closely, those of H. floresiensis.
Consider those hobbit feet, for example. The skeleton unearthed on Flores had a foot that was 20cm in length. This produces a ratio of 70 per cent when compared with the length of the hobbit's thigh bone. By contrast, men and women today have foot-to-thigh bone ratios of 55 per cent. The little folk of Flores had singularly short legs and long, flapper feet, very similar to those of African apemen, even though limbs like these would have made their long march from Africa to Flores a painful business.
Similarly, the hands of H. floresiensis were more like apes than those of evolved humans, their wrists possessing trapezoid bones that would have made the delicate art of stone tool-making very difficult. Their teeth show primitive traits while their brains were little bigger than those of chimpanzees, though CT scans of skull interiors suggest they may have had cognitive skills not possessed by apes.
Nevertheless, this little apeman, with poor physique, a chimp-sized brain and only a limited ability to make tools, now appears to have left Africa, travelled thousands of miles and somehow colonised part, if not all, of south-east Asia two million years ago.
Scientists had previously assumed only a far more advanced human ancestor, such as Homo erectus, was capable of undertaking that task and only managed to do so about a million years ago when our predecessors had evolved powerful physiques, a good gait and the beginnings of intellect. Without these, we would have got nowhere, it was implied.
Then along came little H. floresiensis which, quite simply, has "no business being there," says Morwood. And you can see what he means. Apart from the sheer improbability of a jumped-up ape travelling from Africa to Indonesia, there is the particular puzzle of how it got to Flores.
Primitive hominids were almost certainly incapable of sailing. So how did it arrive on the island in the first place? It is a puzzle, although Stringer believes the region's intense tectonic activity is significant. "After the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, people were found far out at sea clinging to rafts of vegetation. Things like that could have happened regularly in the past and people could have been swept out to sea and washed ashore on Flores. Alternatively, there could have been short-lived connections between now separate islands."
Thus, ancient African apemen travelled half the world, made homes across Indonesia and, in one case, were washed out to sea to end up colonising a remote island that was already populated with pygmy elephants, called stegadons, and giant Komodo dragons, which are still found on the island. It is a truly fantastic tale, worthy of Rider Haggard, and it has turned the study of human evolution on its head.
And then there is the report that dates the stone tools found on Flores as being 1.1 million years old. "That is utterly remarkable on its own," adds Morwood. "Until we found these dates, the longest period of island isolation that we knew about occurred on Tasmania where the aboriginal people were cut off from mainland Australia 11,000 years ago. We thought that was an amazing length of time. But now we have found an island where early humans were cut off from the rest of evolution for more than a million years." In addition, there are those completed digs carried out by Morwood which suggest that some type of human being was making stone implements up to two million years ago.
A crucial aspect to this remarkable story is the region's geography, Morwood believes. The ocean currents and the remoteness of Flores make the island difficult to get to, so once a species does get there, it will remain well protected on it, he argues. "Flores seems to protect species that are long past their use-by dates. There were those pygmy elephants, and the Komodo dragon, for example. And now we have Homo floresiensis. It may be that only a few animals get there but when they do arrive they tend to survive for a long time, which has been science's good fortune."
That is putting it mildly. Had not the original Australian team, led by Morwood, uncovered those hobbit remains in 2004, the story of humanity's African exodus would have been considered a fairly simple affair.
According to this version of events, Homo erectus evolved from apemen predecessors, such as Australopithecus africanus, in Africa and then headed off around the Old World more than a million years ago, armed with a great physique and a modest intellect. These allowed it to settle across Africa, Asia and Europe. This diaspora was then followed by a second wave of humans – our own species, Homo sapiens – which emerged from Africa 100,000 years ago and took over the planet, replacing all pockets of its predecessors it encountered.
Now a far more complex picture is emerging. Ancient apemen, who might have been thought to lack the nous for global conquest, appear to have done the trick almost a million years earlier. One of the major tenets of human evolution, the story of our world conquest, is now urgently in need of revision.
As to the fate of H. floresiensis, that is unclear. The species disappears abruptly from the archaeological record 17,000 years ago. But why? They had apparently survived quite happily on the island for more than a million years. So what did for them in the end?
There are two competing answers. The first suggests that the species, after all the good fortune that had helped it endure the vicissitudes of life in the Malay Archipelago, ran out of luck. "There is a thick layer of ash in the Liang Bua cave above the most recent hobbit remains," says Stringer. "We now know this was caused by a major volcanic eruption which occurred about 17,000 years ago. So it may be that they were just unlucky with the local geology." According to this vision, the little folk of Flores were wiped out by choking plumes of volcanic ash or died of starvation on an island denuded of vegetation.
It would have been a pretty terrible way to go. Yet neither Stringer nor Morwood is convinced that was what happened, despite the tight link between dates of eruptions on the island and the disappearance of the species from the fossil record. Instead, they suspect a very different agent: the bloody hand of modern humans. "Look at our track record," says Morwood. When Homo sapiens entered Europe 40,000 years ago, on its route out of Africa, they would have encountered the continent's original inhabitants, the Neanderthals. Within a few millenniums, the Neanderthals had been rendered extinct.
Stringer agrees. Homo sapiens left Africa about 100,000 years ago and by the time hobbits became extinct on Flores, modern humans were all over south-east Asia. "I cannot see Homo floresiensis keeping modern humans off the island. There must have been encounters between them and us. It is wonderful to speculate what might have happened when they met up, but I suspect that those moderns used up the resources that the hobbit needed to survive."
Robin McKie is the science editor of the Observer
How a hobbit is rewriting the history of the human race
The discovery of the bones of tiny primitive people on an Indonesian island six years ago stunned scientists. Now, further research suggests that the little apemen, not Homo erectus, were the first to leave Africa and colonise other parts of the world, reports Robin McKie
Robin McKie
The Observer, Sunday 21 February 2010
A painting of what researchers believe Homo floresiensis may have looked like. Illustration: Peter Schouten
It remains one of the greatest human fossil discoveries of all time. The bones of a race of tiny primitive people, who used stone tools to hunt pony-sized elephants and battle huge Komodo dragons, were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004.
The team of Australian researchers had been working in a vast limestone cavern, called Liang Bua, in one of the island's remotest areas, when one scientist ran his trowel against a piece of bone. Carefully the group began scraping away the brown clay in which pieces of a tiny skull, and a little lower jaw, were embedded.
This was not any old skull, they quickly realised. Although small, it had special characteristics. In particular, it had adult teeth. "This was no child, but a tiny adult; in fact, one of the smallest adult hominids ever found in the fossil record," says Mike Morwood, of Australia's University of Wollongong and a leader of the original Flores expedition team.
The pieces of bone were carefully wrapped in newspaper, packed in cardboard boxes and then cradled on the laps of scientists on their journey, by ferry and plane, back to Jakarta. Then the pieces of skull, as well as bones from other skeletons found in Liang Bua, were put together.
The end result caused consternation. These remains came from a species that turned out to be only three feet tall and had the brain the size of an orange. Yet it used quite sophisticated stone tools. And that was a real puzzle. How on earth could such individuals have made complex implements and survived for aeons on this remote part of the Malay archipelago?
Some simply dismissed the bones as the remains of deformed modern humans with diseases that had caused them to shrink: to them, they were just pathological oddities, it was alleged. Most researchers disagreed, however. The hobbits were the descendants of a race of far larger, ancient humans who had thrived around a million years ago. These people, known as Homo erectus, had become stranded on the island and then had shrunk in an evolutionary response to the island's limited resources.
That is odd enough. However, new evidence suggests the little folk of Flores may be even stranger in origin. According to a growing number of scientists, Homo floresiensis is probably a direct descendant of some of the first apemen to evolve on the African savannah three million years ago. These primitive hominids somehow travelled half a world from their probable birthplace in the Rift Valley to make their homes among the orangutans, giant turtles and rare birds of Indonesia before eventually reaching Flores.
It sounds improbable but the basic physical similarity between the two species is striking. Consider Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old member of Australopithecus afarensis. She had a very small brain, primitive wrists, feet and teeth and was only one metre tall, but was still declared "the grandmother of humanity" after her discovery in Ethiopia in 1974. Crucially, analysis of Lucy's skeleton shows it has great similarities with the bones of H. floresiensis, although her species died out millions of years ago while the hobbits hung on in Flores until about 17,000 years ago. This latter figure is staggeringly close in terms of recent human evolution and indicates that long after the Neanderthals, our closest evolutionary relatives, had disappeared from the face of the Earth around 35,000 years ago, these tiny, distant relatives of Homo sapiens were still living on remote Flores.
The crucial point about this interpretation is that it explains why the Flores people had such minuscule proportions. They didn't shrink but were small from the start – because they came from a very ancient lineage of little apemen. They acquired no diseased deformities, nor did they evolve a smaller stature over time. They were, in essence, an anthropological relic and Flores was an evolutionary time capsule. In research that provides further support for this idea, scientists have recently dated some stone tools on Flores as being around 1.1 million years old, far older than had been previously supposed.
The possibility that a very primitive member of the genus Homo left Africa, roughly two million years ago, and that a descendant population persisted until only several thousand years ago, is one of the more provocative hypotheses to have emerged in anthropology during the past few years," David Strait of the University of Albany told Scientific American recently. This view is backed by Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London. "We are still grappling with what this discovery has done for our thinking and our conventional scenarios."
In addition, Mike Morwood says he has now uncovered stone tools on nearby Sulawesi. These could be almost two million years old, he believes, which suggests the whole region was populated by very ancient humans for a startlingly long part of human prehistory. "This is going to put the cat among the pigeons," Morwood says.
However, it is the hobbits' similarity to ancient African apemen that provides the most compelling evidence for their ancient origins. In the Journal of Human Evolution, a team led by Debbie Argue of the Australian National University, recently reported that analysis of H. floresiensis shows they most closely resemble apelike human ancestors that first appeared around 2.3 million years ago in Africa. In other words, their stock may be not quite as old as Lucy's but probably comes from a hominid, known as Homo habilis, that appeared on the evolutionary scene not long after Lucy's species disappeared. Homo habilis's features now seem to match, most closely, those of H. floresiensis.
Consider those hobbit feet, for example. The skeleton unearthed on Flores had a foot that was 20cm in length. This produces a ratio of 70 per cent when compared with the length of the hobbit's thigh bone. By contrast, men and women today have foot-to-thigh bone ratios of 55 per cent. The little folk of Flores had singularly short legs and long, flapper feet, very similar to those of African apemen, even though limbs like these would have made their long march from Africa to Flores a painful business.
Similarly, the hands of H. floresiensis were more like apes than those of evolved humans, their wrists possessing trapezoid bones that would have made the delicate art of stone tool-making very difficult. Their teeth show primitive traits while their brains were little bigger than those of chimpanzees, though CT scans of skull interiors suggest they may have had cognitive skills not possessed by apes.
Nevertheless, this little apeman, with poor physique, a chimp-sized brain and only a limited ability to make tools, now appears to have left Africa, travelled thousands of miles and somehow colonised part, if not all, of south-east Asia two million years ago.
Scientists had previously assumed only a far more advanced human ancestor, such as Homo erectus, was capable of undertaking that task and only managed to do so about a million years ago when our predecessors had evolved powerful physiques, a good gait and the beginnings of intellect. Without these, we would have got nowhere, it was implied.
Then along came little H. floresiensis which, quite simply, has "no business being there," says Morwood. And you can see what he means. Apart from the sheer improbability of a jumped-up ape travelling from Africa to Indonesia, there is the particular puzzle of how it got to Flores.
Primitive hominids were almost certainly incapable of sailing. So how did it arrive on the island in the first place? It is a puzzle, although Stringer believes the region's intense tectonic activity is significant. "After the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, people were found far out at sea clinging to rafts of vegetation. Things like that could have happened regularly in the past and people could have been swept out to sea and washed ashore on Flores. Alternatively, there could have been short-lived connections between now separate islands."
Thus, ancient African apemen travelled half the world, made homes across Indonesia and, in one case, were washed out to sea to end up colonising a remote island that was already populated with pygmy elephants, called stegadons, and giant Komodo dragons, which are still found on the island. It is a truly fantastic tale, worthy of Rider Haggard, and it has turned the study of human evolution on its head.
And then there is the report that dates the stone tools found on Flores as being 1.1 million years old. "That is utterly remarkable on its own," adds Morwood. "Until we found these dates, the longest period of island isolation that we knew about occurred on Tasmania where the aboriginal people were cut off from mainland Australia 11,000 years ago. We thought that was an amazing length of time. But now we have found an island where early humans were cut off from the rest of evolution for more than a million years." In addition, there are those completed digs carried out by Morwood which suggest that some type of human being was making stone implements up to two million years ago.
A crucial aspect to this remarkable story is the region's geography, Morwood believes. The ocean currents and the remoteness of Flores make the island difficult to get to, so once a species does get there, it will remain well protected on it, he argues. "Flores seems to protect species that are long past their use-by dates. There were those pygmy elephants, and the Komodo dragon, for example. And now we have Homo floresiensis. It may be that only a few animals get there but when they do arrive they tend to survive for a long time, which has been science's good fortune."
That is putting it mildly. Had not the original Australian team, led by Morwood, uncovered those hobbit remains in 2004, the story of humanity's African exodus would have been considered a fairly simple affair.
According to this version of events, Homo erectus evolved from apemen predecessors, such as Australopithecus africanus, in Africa and then headed off around the Old World more than a million years ago, armed with a great physique and a modest intellect. These allowed it to settle across Africa, Asia and Europe. This diaspora was then followed by a second wave of humans – our own species, Homo sapiens – which emerged from Africa 100,000 years ago and took over the planet, replacing all pockets of its predecessors it encountered.
Now a far more complex picture is emerging. Ancient apemen, who might have been thought to lack the nous for global conquest, appear to have done the trick almost a million years earlier. One of the major tenets of human evolution, the story of our world conquest, is now urgently in need of revision.
As to the fate of H. floresiensis, that is unclear. The species disappears abruptly from the archaeological record 17,000 years ago. But why? They had apparently survived quite happily on the island for more than a million years. So what did for them in the end?
There are two competing answers. The first suggests that the species, after all the good fortune that had helped it endure the vicissitudes of life in the Malay Archipelago, ran out of luck. "There is a thick layer of ash in the Liang Bua cave above the most recent hobbit remains," says Stringer. "We now know this was caused by a major volcanic eruption which occurred about 17,000 years ago. So it may be that they were just unlucky with the local geology." According to this vision, the little folk of Flores were wiped out by choking plumes of volcanic ash or died of starvation on an island denuded of vegetation.
It would have been a pretty terrible way to go. Yet neither Stringer nor Morwood is convinced that was what happened, despite the tight link between dates of eruptions on the island and the disappearance of the species from the fossil record. Instead, they suspect a very different agent: the bloody hand of modern humans. "Look at our track record," says Morwood. When Homo sapiens entered Europe 40,000 years ago, on its route out of Africa, they would have encountered the continent's original inhabitants, the Neanderthals. Within a few millenniums, the Neanderthals had been rendered extinct.
Stringer agrees. Homo sapiens left Africa about 100,000 years ago and by the time hobbits became extinct on Flores, modern humans were all over south-east Asia. "I cannot see Homo floresiensis keeping modern humans off the island. There must have been encounters between them and us. It is wonderful to speculate what might have happened when they met up, but I suspect that those moderns used up the resources that the hobbit needed to survive."
Robin McKie is the science editor of the Observer
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The Hobbit: Out of Africa
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1892606,00.htmlThe Hobbit: Out of Africa
By Jennifer Pinkowski
Tuesday, Apr. 21, 2009
A very small human ancestor made a very big splash back in 2004, when researchers discovered the remains of Homo floresiensis, a 3-ft., prehuman "hobbit," in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. The origin of the species and the route it took to Flores have been much discussed since then. Earlier this month, researchers presented work at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, in Chicago, suggesting that H. floresiensis may have left Africa a full million years earlier than any other hominids were thought to have ventured out from the home continent.
The new theory comes from recent analyses of the interior of the skull of Flo — as some call the 18,000-year-old fossil remains. A young female, Flo exhibits features that bear an uncanny resemblance to skulls from the hominid genus Australopithecus, which lived in Africa from roughly 4 million to 1.5 million years ago. The best-known australopithecene fossils are the 3.2 million–year-old A. afarensis Lucy, discovered in Ethiopia, and the 3 million–year-old A. africanus Taung Child, unearthed in South Africa. (See pictures of South Africa, fifteen years on.)
The problem is, the only early hominids found outside Africa are Homo erectus, the earliest of which date to 1.9 million years ago — about a million years after Lucy, Taung and their ilk. If Flo so closely resembles Lucy and Taung, her ancestors may have emigrated from Africa back when those famous kin were still around.
Florida State University skull-morphology specialist Dean Falk and an international team of researchers compared Flo's skull not only to skulls of other prehuman species, but also to those of modern humans, some with normal development and others with microcephaly, an abnormal smallness of the head. That last comparison was critical, since some researchers have suggested that H. floresiensis represents not a separate species but is instead a modern human stricken with microcephaly or similar illnesses. But the "sick hobbit" hypothesis has been unable to gain much traction.
Falk and the others identified seven specific features of Flo's brain that seem to be more-evolved versions of key characteristics of the much older A. africanus brain. "Over the entire cerebral cortex, there are advanced features that make it look like a very fancy brain," says Falk. "H. floresiensis was clearly there a long time, because it developed its own features."
Overall, Flo's brain shows the global neural reorganization that's a mark of advancing intelligence. What's striking about this relative sophistication is that it developed in such a small brain case. A prime indicator of increasing human intelligence has long been thought to be increasing brain size. However, Falk says, the hobbit's skull is a bit of a mishmash of characteristics in terms of who it resembles. "Its brain sorts with africanus, yet its outside skull features look like Homo erectus," she says.
But William Jungers, one of the primary hobbit researchers, says the similarities to erectus seem to end at the neck. Analysis of various anatomical features suggests that the new species has an overall body plan that looks more ancient than that. "It's not identical to Australopithecus," Jungers says, "but it resembles it in limb proportions, the shape of the bony pelvis, the hands." Adds paleoanthropologist Donald Johansen, who discovered the Australopithecus Lucy: "It is a possibility they got out of Africa earlier than we ever thought. If they were isolated on an island and didn't have gene flow from other populations, it would make sense that they retained ancient features like small stature and small heads."
Upcoming excavations of Flores spearheaded by Mike Morwood, the lead researcher of the Australian-Indonesian team that first unearthed the bones, may help answer the essential question, as Falk puts it, "When did the first [hobbit ancestors] get to the island, and what did they look like?"
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Del Toro a Hobbit-Forming Director
http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=c4fe9cef-bd34-436a-9144-ae73e4ba1c69
Del Toro a Hobbit-Forming Director
by Natalie Finn
1-28-5
After delving into Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, MiddleEarth shouldn't feel like that much of a descent for Guillermo del Toro.
The Academy Award-nominated writer-director is reportedly in talks to helm back-to-back epics adapted from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, which, after various delays, are finally going forward with Peter Jackson set to produce for New Line Cinema and MGM.
A rep for New Line had no comment on the purported negotiations, but del Toro's name has been on a short list of auteurs who could do the fantastical source material justice ever since the studios announced Jackson was back on board.
"I’ve heard some rumblings, but nothing official," del Toro told Entertainment Weekly last month when asked if he'd been approached for the job. "I don’t want to think about it because it’s such an eventuality. It’s the only Tolkien book I read...I read it and I loved it. So it would be a privilege."
The fate of the Lord of the Rings prequel remained in doubt for several years while Jackson, who struck box office gold with his Oscar-winning Rings trilogy, tangled with New Line over royalties.
Lucky for Bilbo Baggins fans, the two sides settled up last month and are ready to proceed with plans for two Hobbit films, which they're planning to shoot one after the other with a budget estimated at $150 million per picture.
Jackson, who has been busy adapting the bestselling novel The Lovely Bones for the big screen and has signed on to share directing duties with Steven Spielberg on a series of Tintin movies, had to pass on helming The Hobbit himself.
Principal photography is tentatively scheduled to begin next year with an eye on respective release dates in 2010 and 2011, but no screenwriters have been hired yet thanks to the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, now in its 13th week.
Del Toro, who earned an Oscar nod for his original screenplay for Pan's Labyrinth, and Jackson, who shared adapted-screenplay honors in 2004 with wife Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, will oversee the writing process, whenever it comes to pass.
Tolkien fans, at least, have been largely positive about the idea of del Toro handling their beloved dwarves and elves, although some are concerned that he might cast a dark shadow over the production.
"Well, all I can say is I certainly can think of directors that I would not want to see touch TH with a 10-foot pole, and del Toro is NOT one of them," wrote the Watcher on LOTR supersite the One Ring. "I do agree with some others here that I fear he alone might make a very dark and disturbing version, but with P.J. on board and New Line basically really needing this film to work, I think it might be pulled off."
"I have hoped that P.J. and del Toro would be working together, it was only a pipe dream," mused Ari-Anna on the One Ring."And it will either be phenomenal or a bust. I am hoping for the first."
At least he didn't come up in an old discussion of "nightmare" Hobbit directors. Those shunned included George Lucas, M. Night Shyamalan, Spike Lee (they probably didn't have to worry there), Sam Raimi, Alfonso Cuarón, Michael Bay, Tim Burton and David Lynch (again, nothing to lose sleep over).
Before making an international splash with Pan's Labyrinth, a horror-tinged fantasy about a young girl seeking respite from her tyrannical stepfather in 1930s-era Spain, del Toro was responsible for the sci-fi thriller Mimic, the vampire-action sequel Blade II and the hit adaptation of the comic book Hellboy.
The 43-year-old filmmaker, who was mentioned frequently last year alongside Babel director Alejandro González Iñárritu and scribe Guillermo Arriaga as one of the Mexican-born masters of cinema taking Hollywood by storm, is currently in postproduction on Hellboy II: The Golden Army and recently executive produced the Spanish-language horror film The Orphanage.
Del Toro a Hobbit-Forming Director
by Natalie Finn
1-28-5
After delving into Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, MiddleEarth shouldn't feel like that much of a descent for Guillermo del Toro.
The Academy Award-nominated writer-director is reportedly in talks to helm back-to-back epics adapted from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, which, after various delays, are finally going forward with Peter Jackson set to produce for New Line Cinema and MGM.
A rep for New Line had no comment on the purported negotiations, but del Toro's name has been on a short list of auteurs who could do the fantastical source material justice ever since the studios announced Jackson was back on board.
"I’ve heard some rumblings, but nothing official," del Toro told Entertainment Weekly last month when asked if he'd been approached for the job. "I don’t want to think about it because it’s such an eventuality. It’s the only Tolkien book I read...I read it and I loved it. So it would be a privilege."
The fate of the Lord of the Rings prequel remained in doubt for several years while Jackson, who struck box office gold with his Oscar-winning Rings trilogy, tangled with New Line over royalties.
Lucky for Bilbo Baggins fans, the two sides settled up last month and are ready to proceed with plans for two Hobbit films, which they're planning to shoot one after the other with a budget estimated at $150 million per picture.
Jackson, who has been busy adapting the bestselling novel The Lovely Bones for the big screen and has signed on to share directing duties with Steven Spielberg on a series of Tintin movies, had to pass on helming The Hobbit himself.
Principal photography is tentatively scheduled to begin next year with an eye on respective release dates in 2010 and 2011, but no screenwriters have been hired yet thanks to the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, now in its 13th week.
Del Toro, who earned an Oscar nod for his original screenplay for Pan's Labyrinth, and Jackson, who shared adapted-screenplay honors in 2004 with wife Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, will oversee the writing process, whenever it comes to pass.
Tolkien fans, at least, have been largely positive about the idea of del Toro handling their beloved dwarves and elves, although some are concerned that he might cast a dark shadow over the production.
"Well, all I can say is I certainly can think of directors that I would not want to see touch TH with a 10-foot pole, and del Toro is NOT one of them," wrote the Watcher on LOTR supersite the One Ring. "I do agree with some others here that I fear he alone might make a very dark and disturbing version, but with P.J. on board and New Line basically really needing this film to work, I think it might be pulled off."
"I have hoped that P.J. and del Toro would be working together, it was only a pipe dream," mused Ari-Anna on the One Ring."And it will either be phenomenal or a bust. I am hoping for the first."
At least he didn't come up in an old discussion of "nightmare" Hobbit directors. Those shunned included George Lucas, M. Night Shyamalan, Spike Lee (they probably didn't have to worry there), Sam Raimi, Alfonso Cuarón, Michael Bay, Tim Burton and David Lynch (again, nothing to lose sleep over).
Before making an international splash with Pan's Labyrinth, a horror-tinged fantasy about a young girl seeking respite from her tyrannical stepfather in 1930s-era Spain, del Toro was responsible for the sci-fi thriller Mimic, the vampire-action sequel Blade II and the hit adaptation of the comic book Hellboy.
The 43-year-old filmmaker, who was mentioned frequently last year alongside Babel director Alejandro González Iñárritu and scribe Guillermo Arriaga as one of the Mexican-born masters of cinema taking Hollywood by storm, is currently in postproduction on Hellboy II: The Golden Army and recently executive produced the Spanish-language horror film The Orphanage.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Peter Jackson won't helm 'The Hobbit'
http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2007/12/no-jackson-will.html
Peter Jackson's manager says the director won't helm 'The Hobbit'
Dec 18, 2007
by Missy Schwartz
Categories: Movie Biz, The Hobbit
As Hollywood Insider reported earlier today, Peter Jackson will executive produce The Hobbit and a sequel, both set to go into pre-production as soon as possible. But although MGM president Harry Sloan told Hollywood Insider there was a chance Jackson himself might end up directing the films, Jackson’s manager Ken Kamins tells HI that was not possible:
“Peter won’t be directing the films because he felt the fans have waited long enough for The Hobbit," Kamis said. "It will take the better part of every day of the next four years to write, direct, and produce the two Hobbit films. Given his current obligations to both The Lovely Bones and Tintin, waiting for Peter, Fran [Walsh, Jackson's life/creative partner), and Philippa [Boyens, co-writer/co-producer] to write, direct, and produce The Hobbit would require the fans wait even longer. By serving as executive producers and having approval over all creative elements of both films, Peter can ensure that the films will be made with the same intimacy and care as if they were writing and directing themselves.”
Despite rumors that Sam Raimi, Alfonso Cuarón, or Guillermo del Toro will be taking over directing duties, sources say that no decisions have been made on that subject, nor has a writer been chosen.
According to New Line co-chief Bob Shaye, the studio plans to meet with Jackson in early 2008 and begin the development process. “All decisions about writers and directors will be made in conjunction with Peter,” Shaye told HI. Another source confirmed that Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens will have director, writer, and cast approval.
It will take some time before anyone begins penning a script for The Hobbit because of the ongoing writers’ strike and Jackson's schedule -- the director is in Pennsylvania shooting The Lovely Bones until February. But surely Jackson is planning a big ole bender back in New Zealand, right? “Honestly, I haven’t talked to Peter!” said Kamins, laughing. “He just got home from Pennsylvania last night!”
-- Additional reporting by Nicole Sperling
Peter Jackson's manager says the director won't helm 'The Hobbit'
Dec 18, 2007
by Missy Schwartz
Categories: Movie Biz, The Hobbit
As Hollywood Insider reported earlier today, Peter Jackson will executive produce The Hobbit and a sequel, both set to go into pre-production as soon as possible. But although MGM president Harry Sloan told Hollywood Insider there was a chance Jackson himself might end up directing the films, Jackson’s manager Ken Kamins tells HI that was not possible:
“Peter won’t be directing the films because he felt the fans have waited long enough for The Hobbit," Kamis said. "It will take the better part of every day of the next four years to write, direct, and produce the two Hobbit films. Given his current obligations to both The Lovely Bones and Tintin, waiting for Peter, Fran [Walsh, Jackson's life/creative partner), and Philippa [Boyens, co-writer/co-producer] to write, direct, and produce The Hobbit would require the fans wait even longer. By serving as executive producers and having approval over all creative elements of both films, Peter can ensure that the films will be made with the same intimacy and care as if they were writing and directing themselves.”
Despite rumors that Sam Raimi, Alfonso Cuarón, or Guillermo del Toro will be taking over directing duties, sources say that no decisions have been made on that subject, nor has a writer been chosen.
According to New Line co-chief Bob Shaye, the studio plans to meet with Jackson in early 2008 and begin the development process. “All decisions about writers and directors will be made in conjunction with Peter,” Shaye told HI. Another source confirmed that Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens will have director, writer, and cast approval.
It will take some time before anyone begins penning a script for The Hobbit because of the ongoing writers’ strike and Jackson's schedule -- the director is in Pennsylvania shooting The Lovely Bones until February. But surely Jackson is planning a big ole bender back in New Zealand, right? “Honestly, I haven’t talked to Peter!” said Kamins, laughing. “He just got home from Pennsylvania last night!”
-- Additional reporting by Nicole Sperling
Thursday, December 20, 2007
'The Hobbit' is a go with Peter Jackson
http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2007/12/its-back-to-mid.html
'The Hobbit' is a go with Peter Jackson
Dec 18, 200
by Nicole Sperling
Categories: Movie Biz, The Hobbit
It's back to Middle Earth for Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and the boys from New Line. Finally, the years of disputes have ended, and the partners (including co-producer and co-distributor MGM) are gearing up for two new Hobbit movies. EW investigated, talking to the parties behind the negotiations to uncover how everything got resolved, and to get an idea of what viewers can expect of these adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's original literary masterpiece. Here's the lowdown:
Jackson and his life/creative partner Walsh have always envisioned the big-screen adaptation of The Hobbit as two movies. The first would deal with the 80-year old novel. The second, imagined entirely by Jackson and Walsh, would link the conclusion of The Hobbit to the start of the first Lord of the Rings book, The Fellowship of the Ring. New Line and Jackson will develop the properties over the next year with hopes of entering into pre-production by 2009 for a 2010 and 2011 release. No writers, including Jackson, Walsh, and their longtime partner Philippa Boyens, have been commissioned. (None can be, because of the strike.)
'The Hobbit' is a go with Peter Jackson
Dec 18, 200
by Nicole Sperling
Categories: Movie Biz, The Hobbit
It's back to Middle Earth for Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and the boys from New Line. Finally, the years of disputes have ended, and the partners (including co-producer and co-distributor MGM) are gearing up for two new Hobbit movies. EW investigated, talking to the parties behind the negotiations to uncover how everything got resolved, and to get an idea of what viewers can expect of these adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's original literary masterpiece. Here's the lowdown:
Jackson and his life/creative partner Walsh have always envisioned the big-screen adaptation of The Hobbit as two movies. The first would deal with the 80-year old novel. The second, imagined entirely by Jackson and Walsh, would link the conclusion of The Hobbit to the start of the first Lord of the Rings book, The Fellowship of the Ring. New Line and Jackson will develop the properties over the next year with hopes of entering into pre-production by 2009 for a 2010 and 2011 release. No writers, including Jackson, Walsh, and their longtime partner Philippa Boyens, have been commissioned. (None can be, because of the strike.)
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