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Even though Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. (MGM) emerged from bankruptcy last month with $500 million to run the newly re-organized company, it still remained a mystery how the studio planned on footing the bill for its half of the production costs of The Hobbit, the two-part prequel to The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) trilogy that is expected to go into production under the direction of Peter Jackson next month. According to Deadline, that dilemma has been solved as Warner Bros. (WB), which was intially thought to be partnering with MGM to pay half of the production costs estimated to be in excess of $500 million, will be financing the entire cost of the production in exchange for worldwide theatrical distribution rights, with MGM retaining international television rights.
Elijah Wood Returning as Frodo Baggins in The Hobbit? >> Posted 01.07.11 by BrentJS -
Lord of the Rings fans wondering where Elijah Wood has been won't exactly get their answer with the upcoming The Oxford Murders. Shot in 2006, the British thriller was released in the U.K. in 2008, and is finally receiving a limited release in the USA on August 6. Directed by Alex De La Iglesia, The Oxford Murders pairs Wood with John Hurt as an Oxford grad student and professor, respectively, who attempt to solve an elderly woman's murder when they realize it is the work of a serial killer. The clip below shows Wood and Hurt convince a local detective of their findings.
Posted 07.02.10 by Ryan -
 | Matt Mauro is the co-host for ReelzChannel TV's Hollywood Dailies and occasionally shares stories from the field. |
On our last day at Sundance, we interviewed a number of stars from The Romantics, including Elijah Wood, Malin Akerman, and Jeremy Strong. Shooting the movie was like being in college again, they told me. They filmed in a small town with one motel, all staying in rooms down the hall from each other and going to the oyster bar or oyster restaurant.
All in all, we interviewed more than 90 actors and directors, which will be featured in upcoming episodes of Hollywood Dailies and a special Sundance Spotlight. Check out the ReelzChannel TV schedule for more details.
Posted 01.27.10 by reelz -
Variety writes that Katie Holmes will replace Liv Tyler as the lead in the upcoming indie flick The Romantics. Tyler left the project for undisclosed reasons, and Holmes joins a cast that already includes Anna Paquin, Elijah Wood, and Adam Brody.
Its story involves eight friends who reunite for the wedding of Paquin's character, Lila. Both she and Holmes' character have a past with the groom, played by Josh Duhamel. Galt Niederhoffer is writing and directing from her own novel, which debuted last summer.
The Romantics begins shooting this week and is due out sometime in 2010.
Posted 11.03.09 by reelz -
Mixing the animated world of 9 with footage of himself in a theater, Elijah Wood has the soul sucked right out of him by one of the many mechanical menaces that litter the movie's landscape. As the title character 9, his main virtue as well as his main flaw is inquisitiveness.
Here he tinkers with the wrong machine, and in response it reaches right through the screen to makes Wood pay for his stitch-punk alter ego's transgression. As 1 tells 9 elsewhere in the movie, "Sometimes fear is the appropriate response."
Posted 09.09.09 by reelz -
Actor Elijah Wood is the rare example of a child actor who's made the transition into adulthood relatively unscathed by the ravages of Hollywood. After a part in Back to the Future Part II at the tender young age of eight, Wood went on to star in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) trilogy, forever becoming identified with Hobbits. Wood is still questioned about the role, even more so now that production on Guillermo del Toro's LOTR prequel, The Hobbit, is underway.
In a recent interview to promote his new movie, 9, Wood was asked who he thinks would make a great choice to play Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit.
That's a tough one. I think Ian Holm really set a high bar for that performance. He really did an extraordinary job, and he really made it his own. There's a lot of quirkiness to that character. It's not the easiest character to play. One couldn't really do it straightforward — there's some odd quirks to him. So it'll be interesting to see who they get. Nobody really comes to mind. They've mentioned a few people so far. James McAvoy is great. I think he could be interesting.
Wood is no stranger to voice acting, having lent his pipes to Mumble in the smash animated feature Happy Feet, so he was right at home in the sound booth for 9, in which he plays the lead role of #9. Interestingly, there are superficial similarities between 9 and The Lord of the Rings that have not escaped Wood's notice.
I just loved that world that [director Shane Acker] created, and I loved the idea of being a part of it and then ultimately the idea of being a part of something that would flesh that out. Taking into consideration the journey that they all took, certainly there were similarities [between 9 and LOTR], but I definitely liked the characters and I think the character of 9 was interesting. They've already established a community, and he comes in with all these questions about who they are and what they are and that we need to get to the bottom of what these machines are about and what does this talisman do. They've all stopped asking those questions. I really liked that about him — that he shakes them loose a little bit to get at who they are and get at solving the dangers that face them.
Of course, one would naturally assume that Wood's favorite role would be portraying the Hobbit that made him a mega-star, but Wood admits to favoring the dark character of Kevin from Frank Miller's Sin City.
Sin City was a pretty awesome role to play. Getting a chance to play a character like [Kevin], and also being a fan of the graphic novel, it was a real treat — not something that comes around often. So that's definitely one of my favorites.
9 also features the voice talents of Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, and Jennifer Connelly.
Posted 09.05.09 by BrentJS -
9 is an animated feature with a history. Originally developed as an award-winning short, it's now been expanded into a feature film with fleshed-out characters and a world of mysteries and dangers to explore. The backstory of the post-apocalyptic, post-human world in which the stitch-punk characters find themselves is hinted at in the movie, but fleshed out much more fully in the lab of the 9 scientist who created them, an elaborate viral web-site that has expanded considerably since it first went online a few months ago.
One cool feature of the site is the series of symbols at the bottom of the page. By clicking on a symbol, you can hear Elijah Wood (the voice of 9) narrating bits of the 9 world's pre-history. In one of the latest installments he reveals part of what went wrong:
Tortured and angry, the fabrication machine lashed out, It began to self-program the machines to indiscriminately kill any sign of life they encountered. The machines went berserk, poisoning the Earth with gas bombs.
Some nicely-stylized sketches from that final war have popped up online as well. And while it was a final war for the humans, the malevolent machines seem to be carrying on, as we can see in another new clip from the movie.
Posted 09.04.09 by reelz -
Although a lot of the recent promotions for Shane Acker's 9 have focused on fleshing out the other numbers of its post-apocalyptic stitch-punk gang, the just-released international trailer puts rag doll number 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood) front and center. He is singled out by the scientist who created him with the task of protecting mankind's legacy, now that humans themselves are gone. It's a task made all the more daunting by the far more immediate imperative of simply not falling prey to the host of deadly mechanical beasties that also populate their world.
Posted 07.10.09 by reelz -
Variety reports that Adrien Brody, Forest Whitaker, Elijah Wood, and Twilight actor Cam Gigandet have all agreed to star in an English-language remake of Das Experiment, the 2001 German thriller directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel and starring Moritz Bleibtreu (Run Lola Run).
Like the original, this new movie – simply titled The Experiment – will tell the story of a group of individuals selected to participate in a psychological study. They are put into a mock prison in which half of the participants are prisoners, the other half guards. As the experiment progresses, the participants fall deeper into their roles, resulting in abusive treatment.
Prison Break writer Paul Scheuring is directing the movie from his own script, which was based on the novel by Mario Giordano (who also wrote the screenplay of the 2001 movie). Inferno Entertainment and Magnet Media Group are financing the movie, which does not yet have a specific release date.
The story idea for The Experiment is based in part on the 1971 Stanford Prison Project, which involved undergraduates at Stanford participating in a similar study in the basement of the university's psychology building. The study was planned for two weeks but had to be abandoned after six days. You can read more about it on the study's official site.
Posted 06.19.09 by reelz -
Via the viral Facebook page for the scientist in Tim Burton's 9 comes access to a new promotional site dropping clues about what led to the demise of humanity and the birth of the 9's nightmare world. The site, titled 9 Experiment: Peace Though Science, features a rotating panoramic view of the the scientist's lab with all sorts of clickable images opening up to reveal new details about the movie's backstory.
There's a lot here to explore. Clicking on the machine with the magnifying glass opens up a video of Elijah Wood (the voice of 9's ragdoll hero) introducing the site. Other highlights include elaborate diagrams of various rather baroque machines and some mysterious symbols that open audio clips offering tidbits about what the world was like before the humans disappeared. Only a few of the symbols are active now, so it looks like quite a bit more to come.
Posted 06.17.09 by reelz