DVD Talk Forum - Predictions on ROTK's opening weekend B.O. take

A really good article that puts just how anticipated this film is in perspective...as well researched as one of these can be:

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'Rings' comes full circle
By Andy Seiler, USA TODAY

The king returns Dec. 17. And the fans shall flock to see him. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King shows every sign of being the blockbuster of the season — and the favorite to win the best picture Oscar.

Viggo Mortenson and the last chapter of the Lord of the Rings trilogy approach.
By Pierre Vinet, New Line Cinema

But fans of the film say the Rings trilogy, of which Return of the King is the final part, is more than just a movie phenomenon.

It's a life-changing experience.

"It's the ultimate event for those who love the books and the films," says fan Rachel Clarke of Lewisville, Texas. She says J.R.R. Tolkien's books — and the films Peter Jackson has made from them — changed her outlook on life and even her profession.

More on her in a moment, however. Let's look at something more down to earth: money. What are the charts of the box office forecasters telling them?

That the charts aren't big enough to map where this king is headed. The Return of the King is simply too big to measure using conventional means.

"The want-to-see and awareness is off the charts," says prognosticator John Shaw of Movieline International.

"Completely off the charts," echoes Gitesh Pandya of boxofficeguru.com.

"Gigantic," says Dan Marks of Nielsen EDI, who won't even consult his charts.

All three agree that forecasting a $300 million take in North America alone would be conservative. To put that in perspective, a movie is considered a blockbuster if it makes just one-third of that: $100 million.

"The film is a phenomenon and ends the trilogy with a tremendously satisfying way that will please audiences of all ages," says Shaw, who saw the film at an early screening. "This incredibly successful series means as much today as Spartacus, Ben-Hur, Dr. Zhivago and Lawrence Of Arabia conveyed to audiences in their time."

And then there's Oscar. Many believe Jackson will be lord of the gold statuettes on Feb. 29.

Film historian Damien Bona, author of Inside Oscar 2, agrees.

"Return of the King is the clear front-runner for best picture, best director and a lot of technical awards," Bona says. "The word that's been leaking out about the film is that it far surpasses the first two entries in the series. Even if that's simply hype, there does seem to be a palpable desire by the film industry for the trilogy's overall achievement to be honored. Although Oscar races are often very flexible, right now there doesn't realistically seem to be anything standing in the way of Return of the King."

Movie Awards author Tom O'Neil, who operates the awards forecasting site goldderby.com, believes that the Jude Law-Nicole Kidman-Renee Zellweger Civil War drama Cold Mountain could be standing in the king's way.

But he adds: "If wizard Gandalf works his magic, Return of the King can prevail to win best picture. When it opens at theaters, it will certainly unleash a hysterical frenzy nationwide that voters might get caught up in. The shortened Oscar season (the Oscars are a month early this year) could help Lord of the Rings this time, give it that winning edge."

Rings rapture has extended to the first two films, which each have been released on DVD in their theatrical versions and in expanded editions that fans actually prefer (more plot and character development).

This spin-off phenomenon has even caught New Line Cinema, the studio releasing the films, off-guard.

"It's incredible out there," says Matt Lasorsa, senior vice president of marketing for New Line Home Entertainment. When the expanded edition of The Fellowship of the Ring (Rings I) met with such success, studio executives figured sales of the theatrical version of The Two Towers (Rings II) would tip while fans held out for the expanded edition of that one.

Instead, sales went up for the regular version of Two Towers— and then orders went up for the expanded version, as well. Lasorsa's guess: "There are a lot more people coming into the camp." (And perhaps many of them want to own both versions.)

Michael Regina, also known as Xoanon, the editor in chief of TheOneRing.net, the most popular of countless Rings fan sites, believes that excitement has reached such a pitch that a startled New Line has had to lower the volume on its marketing.

"The groundswell is reaching its peak at the moment," Regina says. "People have been hearing about these movies for over three years, and most people knew the third was the best installment of the books. If they've learned anything by the Star Wars and Matrix films, it is that too much anticipation can be a bad thing."

That the camp is growing at an unearthly rate is borne out by Netflix, which rents movies by mail.

"We're renting out Two Towers about 50% more than we rented out Fellowship of the Ring," says Chris Kent. That's such a big jump that Kent, too, is looking for other explanations, such as the growth in popularity of Netflix itself.

Even at more established Web sites, the Rings are ringing bells never rung before. Keith Simanton, managing editor of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) says the site can no longer treat the series as normal movies. "We almost avoid putting Lord of the Rings in polls now because it just disproportionately overwhelms everything else," Simanton says. "70.9% of our users say that the one that they want to see the most is Return of the King. People are incredibly passionate about it, and if you go to our site, there's a lot of drama on our individual message boards."

Senh Duong, founder of rottentomatoes.com, which tracks critical reaction to movies, says the site has to buy additional computer servers each year in anticipation of the Rings films and the mushrooming Internet users seeking as much information as possible.

"Still, each year on opening day, our servers get clobbered and our tech guys end up spending the entire day keeping them up and running," Duong says. He believes that a huge part of the phenomenon is the explosive and instant superstardom of Rings (and Pirates of the Caribbean) star Orlando Bloom, a phenomenon in himself. "Just looking at our poster sales and our forums, it seems like he's the driving force behind the success of the films."

That wouldn't explain the booming sales of the books, which are Bloom-free. Sales of Ballantine's mass-market paperbacks of the Rings series (Houghton Mifflin publishes the hardcover and trade paperback editions) are suddenly "staggering," says Colleen B. Lindsay, who is in charge of promotions for the series.

"Ballantine has sold more than 68 million copies of The Lord of the Rings (books) and The Hobbit," she says. (Jackson has said he'd like to tackle The Hobbit, the kid-friendly book prequel to Rings, after he finishes his remake of King Kong.) "The effect the film has had on the sales has been tremendous."

Consider: Ballantine sold 32 million copies of the Rings books from 1965 to 2001. But since the release of the first film two years ago, Ballantine has sold an additional 14 million — almost half as much as the entire preceding 36 years.

So what's it all about, Frodo?

Fans say the key to understanding it all is that The Lord of the Rings books and films shouldn't be seen as mere books and films. No, they are profound, life-changing experiences.

Remember Texas fan Rachel Clarke from the beginning of our tale? She was settling into a career in arts administration when she picked up a copy of the first book just before the film came out.

"I was taken off-guard by the depth of the story and its fabulous, and probably unparalleled, use of language," Clarke says. "I became enraptured by his knowledge and use of ancient languages from the British isles in his creation of the elven languages, the character names and town names."

Bye bye, arts administration. Hello linguistics studies.

Clarke is now a graduate student in linguistics at the University of North Texas and is aiming for a professorship in the field.

She plans to attend the midnight showing on opening night with a gaggle of friends. "And my boss better expect me to call in sick the next day."

Hardcore fans tend to get lost in reverie — and echo Tolkien's fanciful language — when trying to describe their devotion.

Jeffery W. Vail, who teaches humanities at Boston University and catches himself crying while watching the films, says, "I went to the earliest possible screenings for Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers," says the resident of Brookline.

"They were midnight shows. The audience was kind of annoying, but I just couldn't wait for a later show. I can't this time either: If I tried I would be awake all night thinking about what I was missing!"

But Return of the King stands out from the other two, Vail says.

"Return of the King is the best book in the trilogy and is full of things that are so gargantuan and complex that you would think they were unfilmable," he says. "It's incredible to think that Peter Jackson actually succeeded in putting it all on film. A normal director would probably have shot himself before undertaking such a gigantic task."

Donna Correia, 28, managed to become obsessed with the films even while she was planning her wedding.

"My husband and I must have seen the Fellowship movie at least seven times in the theater," says Correia, a medical manuscript editor who lives in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles. "We saw The Two Towers less often, but I was planning our wedding and had less free time. We of course bought the DVDs as soon as they came out and have watched them repeatedly."

For Correia's bachelorette party, she and her friends took a life-sized cardboard cutout of Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn for a night out on the town.

"I far prefer cardboard Aragorn to real-life oily strippers," she says.

And she prefers the books to almost anything. "The depth of the world Tolkien created is mind-boggling," she says. "Frodo's sacrifice breaks my heart. Reading the books helps me hope that there is good in the world, and that individuals have the power to make the world positive. Sometimes I really need to be reminded of that."

Clinical psychologist Steven M. Sultanoff of Irvine, Calif., believes that Correia has precisely nailed why Rings mania has grown.

"It's partly the struggle between good and evil, which, given our present-day issues with terrorism, has become heightened in our awareness," says Sultanoff, who has read the books several times.

"In addition, the stories include so many original characters that almost everyone can identify with, admire, or strongly dislike someone from the Hobbits to the elves to the Ents and on.

"The fantasy of the story involves the weakness/underdogs aided by magic and magic within. It is a human passion to be magical or uniquely powerful. At the same time there is magic of the wizards, there is a sense of inner magic in the elves or in the strength of the Hobbits. I believe that we as humans strive for the inner 'magic.' "

Ballantine's Lindsay says the effect on children is especially profound.

"When I first started working here in 1999, I used to receive a dozen or so letters a year from children who were writing to J.R.R. Tolkien after reading either The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings," she says.

"Since Tolkien is deceased, I usually wrote back to the kids myself. Since the films have opened, however, we're now receiving hundreds of letters from kids."

No longer able to answer every letter, she still becomes enraptured while reading the children's reactions and sometimes loses track of the time.

"Any author who has been dead for over 30 years yet still can inspire kids to read books and write letters to a publisher must be powerful indeed," Lindsay says.

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http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/...otr-main_x.htm