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And Now It's Time to Say Good-bye...

© Michael Martinez

Not to this column, but to the almost daily set reports from the various locations in New Zealand. Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" production is wrapping up location work and in a few more weeks (okay, a couple more months) will finish principal photography completely. From that point forward Tolkien fans around the world will wait with bated breath for the result of Peter Jackson's editing skills. Of course, a great amount of CGI work remains to be done, and perhaps a few favored Web sites will be given glimpses of behind-the-scenes works and some advance snippets of what is yet to come. LOTRmania has gotten some mention in the press this year, but we all know in our hearts that we ain't seen nothing yet. In about six more months, give or take, the advance publicity will begin to hit the magazines, the television shows, the newspapers. Everyone knows the movies are coming. The first trailer is almost upon us. People are already looking forward to the DvD (hoping, probably hopelessly, that Bombadil will appear on it). You know kiddies, we aren't even halfway through this deal yet. It's been only about three years since the rumors first started circulating that Peter Jackson might be doing a LOTR movie. We've got more than three years left before the last movie is released (December 2003), and it will be at least another six to twelve months before the last DvD comes out after that. The last year has been the most compelling year, however. We've seen the commercial Tolkien world turned on its ear. Iron Crown Enterprises announced that it had lost its license to distribute Tolkien-related products on September 22, 1999 (great timing, someone). On that same day Sierra On-line announced the same day that they were not bringing Orcs: Revenge of the Ancient to computer desktops after all, and they fired the entire development team so they could start over. Since then, Toy Vault has been pressured to discontinue its marvelous line of Middle-earth Action Figures so that Toy Biz could license someone else to do it (no doubt with less attention to detail, and definitely based on the movies rather than the books). Sierra has gone to court to try and convince the world that it really does have a Middle-earth Online game waiting in the wings, and that it should be able to bring it out. Iron Crown Enterprises has changed its bankruptcy to Chapter 7 and will close its doors on December 1. They aren't taking orders any more.