Announced: The Tom Bombadil Movie

NEWS: "The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past" (Or The Tom Bombadil movie) has been announced as in development. Peter Jackson introduced Stephen Colbert who made the explanation of how the development process started.

In this episode we look closely at who is busy with preproduction on "The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt For Gollum" film, including concept artists, and then a look at the content for the film as outlined by Colbert.

Transcript

It’s been too long, but here we are with another episode of The Tolkien Podcast. I have an additional episode nearly ready to record about J.R.R. Tolkien and WWI, but that’s a pretty complex discussion and I just want to get it as right as I can possibly get it and in the meantime, we have today’s episode. The other night while I was working on Tolkien and war as a topic, news crossed my path that had me checking the calendar. I wondered, I mean I literally check to make sure it wasn’t April 1.

Peter Jackson made headlines in the last few days by announcing on Instagram that Stephen Colbert, who winds up his stint at CBS in May and will be, apparently unemployed, is developing a new Lord of the Rings film through New Line Cinema and Warner Bros.

Jackson was originally on video to say that he would be updating with information about THE HUNT FOR GOLLUM with Andy Serkis directing. He said the film looks great and he feels confident that it will be a really good film, the script is in good shape.

But, while he was there, providing the first of what he said would be more video updates — more on that in a few minutes— he brought Colbert on from his office presumably, in front of some of Colbert’s personal Tolkien items, including a cave troll figure and a Hildebrandt Brothers (the late Tim and Greg Hildebrandt) Tolkien print on the wall.

Colbert has long been associated with nerd gear, including a replica of Bilbo's and Frodo’s sword Sting. And while the two (Jackson / Colbert) never said the name Tom Bombadil, Colbert made it absolutely clear, so for good or for ill, that’s what we can expect to see. Lets talk about it.  My name is Larry Curtis and you’re listening to the Tolkein Podcast.

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So we are here to talk about a big Tolkien movie announcement, the Tom Bombadil movie. 

Lets set the stage for the announcement. Perhaps you aren’t a person who follows the development of films but it’s in what is called pre production right now. SO cameras aren’t rolling, but the production team is hard at work on the film, imagining, planning and especially designing the film.



This is a concept stage, an imagining and mapping stage, a design stage. In the video of Jackson and Colbert — now on the Warners official YouTube channel by the way, and vertical, so shaped for Instagram — Pete says the gang is getting back together and on that video we see some of the gang.

That includes Gino Ascevado, who is an American from Arizona who has been in New Zealand for 20 years, maybe 30. He is a social guy, fun and easy to talk to. He has been doing this thing he loves for ages and has worked with the legends of prosthetics like Stan Winston and the team at Weta, of which he has been part. So he is working on Andy’s film.

It significantly also includes John Howe. As many of you know, Alan Lee and John Howe were among the most well-known Tolkien artists in the world in the late 1990s and Jackson hired them to join him in New Zealand to draft and design what landscapes and structures and armor and characters and weapons and creatures should look like in those films. They weren’t the only ones, but they were mighty contributors.

Initially that was for a limited time, but as New Zealand turned into the Middle-earth machine, Howe and Lee were there for years.

Of all the smart things Jackson did for the LOTR films, IMHO, this was among the smartest. It was cost effective to bring Howe and Lee to NZ to create the look of the Rings films that closely resembled the look of Middle-earth in books and on posters and games and calendars, which is now the look of Middle-earth on film.


This is a big part of why, when audiences sat down and watched the LOTR trilogy back in 2000-2003, most people said, “That’s exactly how I pictured it!”  But, what audiences didn’t realize, is they had already been given glimpses into Middle-earth that imprinted in their brains. And the films resembled that, so it was more a case of “I pictured it like that because Christopher Tolkien approved art by John Howe and Alan Lee and Garland and Nasmith for use on books that planted seeds in my imagination!”

That’s why it all seemed so familiar to us. 

Very very clearly the Rings of Power series follows the visual template of the Jackson films and those films followed the template of Lee and Howe and others that put seeds, single images of Middle-earth in people’s brains. Howe in fact, is a concept designer for the TV series. 

I mentioned that Hildebrant Brothers are on Colbert’s wall. That’s a signifier, a clue, that Colbert’s fandom stretches back longer than the Howe / Lee / Ted Nasmith era. In the early ‘70s Tolkien’s popularity was really building, everywhere, but in the massive market of the US. One of the ways, incidentally was from the unauthorized ACE paperback editions of his works in

America, and then he passed Sept. 2, 1973. That same year the first annual Tolkien calendar was published. That one had his artwork, so though he surely knew it was being published, he couldn’t have known what the annual Tolkien calendar would become. Many Tolkienites around the world buy this calendar every single year. It’s good tradition.

The following two years, ’74 and ’75, it was, as I understand a collection of Tolkien artists but it definitely contained some of the work of Tim Kirk and almost certainly YOU have seen some of his stuff. The piece I am most familiar with is a tall Gandalf towering over Bilbo. If you love Tolkien, it’s likely there in your memory.



But in 1976, the calendars took a leap with the Hilderbrandt Brothers art and it was that for ’77 and ’78 and so as Tolkien fandom was exploding, there were the Hilderbrandts to give the visuals for what people were imagining in books they read. And, in 1977, The Silmarillion was published, so the start of the expansion of the Tolkien library, which calls for more art and certainly more scenes and characters and moments and legends and monsters to draw and paint. Which is and was AWESOME in scope. 


SIDEBAR: A Tolkien illustration was on the first edition of The Silmarillion and Ted Naismith is widely seen as THE guy who illustrates The Sil now.  BUT There was a Ballentine Paperback edition of The Silmarillion in 1979 - the first one I saw, golden, and it was illustrated by Darrell K. Sweet, who has passed on, but he did fantastic images of the fall of Numenor.  He was great with landscapes and destruction.



In 1979 it was the Ralph Bakshi animated / rotoscoped movie and calendar.  I don’t want to do a year by year but in the ‘80s it became more realistic and more heavy emotionally, different from the fun and bright tones. That’s when Ted Nasmith, John Howe and Alan Lee really became synonymous with Tolkien. Roger Garland was in the mix as were others.

I find Garland is a little bit forgotten or undiscovered by current audiences. 

He provided the cover illustrations for The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and most of The History of Middle-earth series. So he is a massively important Tolkien artist. I have wondered if Jackson reached out to him for the films, but I never asked.

If you look at Garland’s Nazgul on a fell beast you will see very clearly it was an obvious inspiration for the Jackson films. Not a copy, but an inspiration.

He passed away in 2017.

So when Jackson started trying to do concept art, he ended up with Lee and Howe. I know Nasmith was also asked. He is Canadian and he decided not to commit to that long experience of making three movies. Anyway, John Howe and I had a good talk a couple of times on the Hobbit set including a late night shoot on Lake Town where he stayed to see how it was going — I don’t think he was there to talk to me but rather to see how the concept happened in real life. And, it was a shoot with fire and stunts and lots of extras so it was pretty exciting. 


Anyway, I like John Howe a lot, the world loves his art, I love his art and he is working on Andy Serkis’ movie and that’s probably a big plus for the film.. You can spend time enjoying John’s work online. One of my favorites of his is “Ulmo, Lord of the Waters.”

Another person returning is Dan Hennah. This is a guy who definitely knows how to run an art department. He is a guy Serkis is familiar with, probably really close friends with actually. He won an Oscar for set decoration on Return of the King and was nominated for all three Rings films and King Kong.



In the New Zealand film world it is pretty remarkable that Peter Jackson was born, Richard Taylor was born and Dan Hennah was born at about the same time to really give their art and abilities to the Middle-earth film series. He is a really nice guy, treated me well. He gave me a ride in fact to the Dale set that was in a post-Smaug state when I visited, in ruins and burns.



Andy Serkis is directing, Peter Jackson and his usual team are producing. Now, that team includes Philipa Boyens as a writer with Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou. I do NOT know those people and I don’t know what kinds of writers they are, but I do know some films they worked on.