Thompson, Kristin
2007
The Frodo Franchise: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood

The 3-film-version budget was USD 270m at first. When the first film was a success it was raised and ended up at roughly USD 330m.

4
“People use the term “franchise” rather loosely in relation to films.”

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“Film historian David Bordwell has suggested that modern cinema has developed an approach called “worldbuilding,” where filmmakers aim to create “a rich, fully furnished ambience for the action.” He traces the trend back to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), with its futuristic real brand-name props and its depiction of the mundane logistics of jogging or losing a pen in a weightless environment. Alien (1979) took the idea further by depicting meals and equipment malfunctions in an aging, grungy spaceship. Blade Runner (1982), All the President’s Men (1976), and Gladiator (2000) all share a propensity to jam settings with detail, all to create authenticity, fantastical or historical.” See Bordwell, David; The Way Hollywood Tells It; 2006; pp. 58-59.

89
Jackson’s approval was necessary for voice actors who would be dubbing the Spanish version. He wanted audition tapes for every single major voice. “Multiply that time by the number of languages into which Rings was dubbed, and it becomes apparent that Jackson took great pains to make sure that all aspects of the film fit together seamlessly.” -> coordination! He’s an entarch!

90
“the film would follow Tolkien in treating the story as history rather than fantasy.”

91
“When [Hobbits} interacted with other races, the sets, props and costumes had to be built at two different scales. So thoroughly was the contrast carried through that fabric for the costumes was woven with different widths of the same thread."
"In short, almost all of the 48,000 objects made for the film were manufactured as if they were to be used in the real world, not simply to create illusions in a film."

92
"The leather-working department alone employed thirty-five people. [...] A forge was set up in Weta Workshop to make the armor and weapons.”

100
“In the age of globalization and coproduction, more and more Hollywood or Hollywood-funded films are being shot offshore, away from their producers’ watchful eyes. This may actually be a good thing for both the studios and moviegoers.” She gives quotes that there is no proof that anything the studios do (supervision, market research, test screenings) has any positive impact on a film’s chances of success. I don’t believe that.

105
“In 2002 the major studios spent $3.1 billion on print and media ads, up an astonishing half a billion dollars from the year before. And that year a trailer for a big Hollywood release cost an average of $500,000 to $1.2 million.”

113
Studios sometimes pay cable stations to run making-of docos. But normally it’s the other way round.

123
“For a journalist working in the world of infotainment, the EPK [Electronic Press Kit] is a god-send. You know only what the publicists want you to know, but you know enough to appear well-informed. You can cover the film as if it were news, illustrating your piece with images and footage, all the while hitting the notes that the marketers want hit.”

125
At press junkets: “We might think that a studio publicity department would want more variety, to keep spectators interested while following such coverage. The studio’s goal, however, is to link each main character, each major plot line, and other important components of the film to one or two simple concepts that will “brand” the film and help it float above the clutter of competing publicity. Diversity of coverage matters less than keeping journalists on topic.”

141
“In many cases, the much-vaunted synergy that was supposed to develop among the components of large media conglomerates in the 1990s didn’t meet expectations, but Paddison managed to make alliances within AOL Time Warner work for Rings.”

174-176
Fanfiction terms:

1. fics = fanfiction
2. gen = general
3. het = heterosexual
4. slash = refers to the punctuation mark used to indicate the pairing, i.e. Aragorn/Legolas; slash fics center around same-sex romance; typically male
5. femmeslash = female/female parirings
6. FPS = fictional-person slash, usually just referred to as slash
7. RPS = real-person slash

184
RL = real life (on fan websites and lists)

193
“Zaentz may make more money on Rings than anyone else. Apart from his rumored 5 percent of gross international box office, he retained the hundreds of Tolkien-related trademarks that he had acquired in the 1970s and simply licensed New Line to license other companies to manufacture merchandise.” Oh seriously, world!?

194
“When a film company licenses another firm to make ancillary products, the studio puts together a style guide so that the products and packaging can have a uniform look. even though dozens or even hundreds of different firms might be creating those ancillaries.”
“A style guide was created for each of Rings‘ three parts.”

195
“Rings was its [Decipher's] second RPG, and the firm obtained licenses to use characters, places, and situations from both Tolkien’s novel and Jackson’s film.” That’s how spread the IP is. Seriously, world!?

196
“Proposed [RPG] products were run past the filmmakers, though they were not always allowed much input on whether a product was sufficiently dignified.” That’s not EA.

197
“The continued market for such merchandise more than two years after the release of Return reflects the durability of the franchise.”
“the action figures were based on facial or even body scans, and the actors had right of approval on them and on other products derived from such scans. Since these scans involved the actors’ direct participation, their contracts specified royalties on the sales of such products.”

198
“One report put the profit [!] on the [touring Te Papa LotR] exhibition at a million dollars, though how that amount was divided up is unknown.”

204
“In the late 1990s, getting consumers to stop renting VHS tapes became a major goal of the industry, and the studios noticed that buyers favored franchise films over single features.”

205
“Sales costs [of VHS] were high, so people primarily rented movies and owned only the programs they taped off air. Laser discs were introduced in 1978 but never caught on widely. They were big (twelve inches across), they were expensive, they were recorded on both sides and had to be turned over, and they were not recordable.

206
“In 1993 the laser disc format was in its brief heyday.”

215
“In true franchise fashion, the various DVD versions promoted the theatrical runs of subsequent parts of the film.” Nothing bad about this, but it’s a pure business decision. It’s got nothing to do with providing a better experience for consumers.

216
“All along Jackson insisted that the longer versions were not “director’s cuts.” The theatrical versions, he said, were the director’s cuts. The new ones were “extended editions.””

219
“For a long time videotapes had cost in the range of $70 and up, and most people chose instead to rent them.”

222
“The year 2002 was also when total spending on home-video sales and rentals surpassed gross theatrical income for the first time.”

224
“how can the [video] games continue indefinitely? Stories that are part of franchises need to go beyond the limits of the movies, so the problem is to find new narrative material to develop. In expanding Rings, the games’ designers chose to emphasize not the Ring, but the continent of Middle-earth, the races that inhabit it, and the battles in which they participate. The fourth game’s title, “The Battle for Middle-earth,” signals that approach.”

226
“Clearly the film industry remains far larger [than the video game industry] and will be winning this “race” for a long time.” She dismantles the myth that the video game industry is larger than the film industry. Only if you add up game and game console sales, and only if you compare that with theatrical revenues. If you compare just games with the entire income of the film industry across all windows, then it’s USD 6.2bn to USD 45bn (2004 figures).
“The ten bestselling video games for 2003 were all sequels or film adaptations.”

227f
“(The Pokemon film series is often listed as a video game adaptation, but the franchise began as a TV series.)” Is that true? Didn’t Jesse Schell write the opposite?

234
In October 200, “the trade press reported that EA had acquired the film-based Rings game rights from New Line. [The book-based game rights had already been sold. Seriously, what?!] The negotiations between the two firms did not involve Jackson or any of the filmmakers, already a year into principal photography.”

237
“Skaggs calls this double-duty use of publicity “the whole franchise effect”: “All the marketing and advertising and everything hits for the films, and people walk into the store, Best Buy or something, and they go, ‘Oh, look, there’s the thing I just saw advertised a thousand times on TV or in the movies. Wow, I want it!’””

245
“Places rather than plot offer the main thread for extending the franchise in the games.”

247
“As before, the games put the emphasis on Middle-earth, with minimal links to the plot of the film.”

248
“Games makers became more cautious about licensing summer blockbusters. They wanted, according to Variety, “major franchises that have a potential life far beyond that of a film release.””

“Now the “Matrix” games had much greater participation from the directors. But in terms of asset usage or reusage, I would say that “The Lord of the Rings” is second to none.” Quotes Neil Young.

249
““The visual grammar of games and movies is bleeding into one. Glance at a TV trailer for ‘Medal of Honor’ and you’d think it was advertising Saving Private Ryan. Play ‘Max Payne’ and you’re in Sin City.”

250
“Viewers sometimes wonder whether the anticipation that Rings would spawn video games influenced the filmmakers’ design or staging decisions. According to Jackson, it did not, and stunt masters Maxwell and James have echoed that claim.”

252
“By the spring of 2005, “Enter the Matrix” had sold nearly six million copies internationally. It had set the bar for directors participating in games based on their movies. The Wachowskis, by then two very rich men, were working on “The Matrix: Path of Neo,” incorporating footage from all three films”

253
“as EA went on expanding Middle-earth without him, Jackson stepped into an era when directors can control far more of a franchise than the film at its center.”

257
“In the film industry, “independent” chiefly refers to the way a film is financed and distributed. A major studio has its own production budget and the ability to draw upon investments and loans to fund its films. It owns overseas branches that release and publicize its product. By contrast, an independent company typically raises a substantial portion of a film’s budget by preselling the local distribution rights to firms in foreign countries.”

283
Definition Wellywood:
Wellington-Hollywood

291
Jackson owns part or all of the following companies:

• Wingnut Films
• Three foot Six
• Weta Workshop
• Weta Digital
• Stone Street Studios
• The Film Unit, Ltd.

300
Definition runaway production:
“‘I would say a runaway production would be a picture that’s set in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles—or the United States—that was done over in a different country because it was cheaper to do over there.’” Quotes Barrie Osborne.

“Where runaway productions go often depends on a combination of finding suitable locations for the particular film at hand, a favorable exchange rate, a pool of skilled, often nonunion labor, a cooperative government bureaucracy, and, ideally, some sort of governmental financial incentive.”

330
“For the first time since World War I, Hollywood is having to struggle to maintain its place as the Mecca of the filmmaking world.” www.ceidr.org/CEIDR_News_3.pdf

Barrie Osborne: “‘Right now the U.S. has a hold on the center of the financial organization of movies, and once you chase away the advantage of putting a movie together in L.A. away from the U.S., you’ve really lost the game, I think.’”

“Jonathan Wolf, of the American Film Market, declares, “The studios produce only so that they can continue to distribute. They’d get out of the production business tomorrow if they were guaranteed a steady flow of product.” With the spread of filmmaking centers, that steady product flow might well come from abroad. Perhaps the Los Angeles area eventually will be more centered on financing and distributing films than on physically making them. As Rings shows, an epic film not only can be made more cheaply abroad, but even, in the right circumstances, can be made better.”

331
“By now it should be clear that film franchises are not simply a sign that Hollywood’s creative well has run dry. Franchises are a deliberate economic strategy aimed at maximizing the monetary worth of a studio’s intellectual property.”

“Some might claim that the modern franchise film is so commercialized that it blends into a mishmash of branded products and ceases to have a distinct cultural identity. I don’t think there is any reason to believe this. The film is the center of the franchise, the product without which the others could not exist. Modern media culture has hardly confused us so much that we can’t distinguish the movie from the products that surround it.”
-> Entarch will change that!

“Another, more serious claim has been that globalization and the domination of world screens by big-budget Hollywood movies increasingly stifle diversity of filmmaking and homogenize what audiences have available to see. One can always find evidence to bolster such a belief, but one can equally find evidence to refute it—suggesting that the truth lies somewhere in between.”