Ha, I'd never heard of this little animated Hobbit! This is aawesome.
Fyi on the Boorman script: they bought it for $3M in order to "kill it", aka make 100% certain no one else could ever make it. The first episode of Seth Rogen's THE STUDIO cover this practice, when Rogen buys the latest Martin Scorcese screenplay about the Jonestown Massacre so that the content ("drinking the kool-aid") won't ever cast a pall over the studio's attempt to make a famiily friendly Kool-Aid movie.
It's not quite a pure kill though as that would be paying Boorman when here they paid Medavoy who had already paid Boorman. So Bakshi's production paid Medavoy because he wanted to recoup his costs. As you write it's technically a kill payment, but it's a roundabout one rather than a direct one.
The irony of THE STUDIO's use of Kool-Aid is that I'm pretty sure Seth Rogen knows that it was Flavoraid and not Kool-Aid that they drank in Jonestown.
Ha ha, for sure they knew, but all that matters is public perception, and “the public” connects it to the kool-aid phrase.
On the topic of “kill” payments, I’m not sure it matter who you pay, so long as the purpose is to secure the rights with no intention of ever making it.
It's been decades since I saw the animated Hobbit or LotR, but I've learned that my nostalgia brain is best left with what it remembers, rather than trying to relive some of that stuff. (Six Million Dollar Man does NOT live up to what it's been in my head since those years.)
Now you've got me wondering what other things John Boorman could do, as he's still alive; imaging what he could do with an adaptation of some fantasy like LITTLE BIG. Then again, he's earned his rest; going to IMDB, I'm floored I'd never realized just how broad and wild his filmography is, and he'd be one helluva movie night just in showing Zardoz and Excalibur, let alone throwing Hope & Glory or Deliverance in there...
Ha, I'd never heard of this little animated Hobbit! This is aawesome.
Fyi on the Boorman script: they bought it for $3M in order to "kill it", aka make 100% certain no one else could ever make it. The first episode of Seth Rogen's THE STUDIO cover this practice, when Rogen buys the latest Martin Scorcese screenplay about the Jonestown Massacre so that the content ("drinking the kool-aid") won't ever cast a pall over the studio's attempt to make a famiily friendly Kool-Aid movie.
It's not quite a pure kill though as that would be paying Boorman when here they paid Medavoy who had already paid Boorman. So Bakshi's production paid Medavoy because he wanted to recoup his costs. As you write it's technically a kill payment, but it's a roundabout one rather than a direct one.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190331002839/https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/lord-rings-almost-starred-mick-jagger-1160023
The irony of THE STUDIO's use of Kool-Aid is that I'm pretty sure Seth Rogen knows that it was Flavoraid and not Kool-Aid that they drank in Jonestown.
https://www.vox.com/2015/5/23/8647095/kool-aid-jonestown-flavor-aid
Ha ha, for sure they knew, but all that matters is public perception, and “the public” connects it to the kool-aid phrase.
On the topic of “kill” payments, I’m not sure it matter who you pay, so long as the purpose is to secure the rights with no intention of ever making it.
It's been decades since I saw the animated Hobbit or LotR, but I've learned that my nostalgia brain is best left with what it remembers, rather than trying to relive some of that stuff. (Six Million Dollar Man does NOT live up to what it's been in my head since those years.)
Now you've got me wondering what other things John Boorman could do, as he's still alive; imaging what he could do with an adaptation of some fantasy like LITTLE BIG. Then again, he's earned his rest; going to IMDB, I'm floored I'd never realized just how broad and wild his filmography is, and he'd be one helluva movie night just in showing Zardoz and Excalibur, let alone throwing Hope & Glory or Deliverance in there...