We’ve known for a while that the third film of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings prequel trilogy, following An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug, The Hobbit is set to be subtitled There and Back Again but the usually reliable fan site The One Ring claims that change is afoot. It’s rumoured that a new title is being considered by Jackson and New Line – The Hobbit: Into the Fire. As well as a neat reference to Smaug, Tolkien fans and those with a good memory will recall the book’s chapter and the film’s line “Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” as its source. As cool as this sounds, I think There and Back Again better demonstrates the completion of Bilbo’s adventures and our time in Middle Earth.
Whatever it gets called, it’ll come out this Christmas and will star Martin Freeman, Luke Evans, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Manu Bennett, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Hugo Weaving, Ian Holm, Ryan Gage, Sylvester McCoy, Bret McKenzie, Billy Connolly, Mikael Persbrandt, Lawrence Makoare, Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch and Christopher Lee alongside the Dwarves, Aidan Turner, Dean O’Gorman, Graham McTavish, James Nesbitt, Adam Brown, Ken Stott, William Kirchir, Stephen Hunter, Peter Hambleton, Jed Brophy, John Callen, Mark Hadlow and Richard Armitage.
Man of Steel caused a strong reaction upon its 2013 summer release: some (including us) loved the hard hitting action and emotional involvement but others found it a head-bangingly loud fanfare, which it arguably is. It still brought in huge box office figures bringing in just shy of $700 million and becoming the 9th highest grossing film of the year. Its director, 300 and Watchmen’s Zack Snyder, is busy at work on the yet untitled sequel but he’s taken some time out to tell us about his plans for DC’s future.
“After Man Of Steel finished and we started talking about what would be in the next movie, I started subtly mentioning that it would be cool if he faced Batman. In the first meeting, it was like, ‘Maybe Batman?’ Maybe at the end of the second movie, some Kryptonite gets delivered to Bruce Wayne’s house or something. Like in a cryptic way, that’s the first time we see him.”
“But then, once you say it out loud, right? You’re in a story meeting talking about, like, who should Superman fight if he fought this giant alien threat Zod who was basically his equal physically, from his planet, fighting on our turf. You know, who to fight next? But I’m not going to say at all that when I took the job to do Man Of Steel that I did it in a subversive way to get to Batman. I really believe that only after contemplating who could face Superman did Batman come into the picture.”
“The thing also that’s really fascinating for me is that, even just in the tests we’ve been doing, the costumes, right? You basically have Batman and Superman — and this is without Ben (Affleck – above in Argo) and Henry (Cavill) in the costumes, but just like the stand-ins, just testing to see what the costumes look like. And you have them standing there and they’re standing in the same shot — and then we have Wonder Woman, you know, all three of them in the same shot. Even just for a test, you really have to go, ‘Wow, that’s crazy!’ Not only is it the first time that I’m seeing them, it’s the first time they’ve ever existed together on screen in a movie. Even just Batman and Superman standing next to each other. It’s kind of epic. It’s crazy. But it’s fun.”
The Man of Steel follow up will star Henry Cavill (Immortals, The Tudors), Ben Affleck (Argo, The Town), Amy Adams (American Hustle, The Master), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Now You See Me) Gal Gadot (Fast and Furious, Knight and Day), Jeremy Irons (The Lion King, Dead Ringers) Holly Hunter (The Piano, The Incredibles), Callan Mulvey (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 300: Rise of an Empire), Tao Okamoto (The Wolverine) and Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix, Apocalypse Now).
Batman vs Superman – May 6th 2016
The Hobbit: There and Back Again – December 12th
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