[Kalimac]

Olorin, we're not saying that it wouldn't make a good movie, nor are we implying that moviegoers are idiots. The main idea behind the "too dark" idea (at least for me) is that whenever a studio makes a movie, they usually want at least some reasonable shot of recouping their money, and stories along the lines of Turin Turambar tend to be big risks. You might make a quirky, weird movie which will strike a nerve and everyone will love it despite its unrelieved darkness - "The Crying Game" and "Breaking the Waves" certainly were no comedyfests, and they got great reviews and brought in a good audience. (Albeit the second one was an arthouse flick). Or more likely it'll get buried; chain theatres will be unwilling to commit at least two weeks' worth of theatre space to a movie that will probably not sell many tickets.<P>Why would it be a hard sell? Partly because in any project involving the Silmarillion you'd be catering to a very narrow core audience - although now that LOTR is made, you could probably advertise it as "By the same author who brought you Lord of the Rings" - that is, if you weren't afraid of Tolkien's vengeful ghost visiting you one night. But the risk is still great that your main draw will be Tolkien fanatics who have read the Silmarillion. Not even every Tolkien fan has made it through that book, and the number of people who are NOT Tolkien fans and have read the book as a crossover - well, I'm willing to bet that you could count them on one hand. It's not that the studios would object to attracting Tolkien fans, what they'd object to is the fact that this project would be unlikely to attract anyone *besides* people like us. And they are in a business, a very competitive one. <P>So those are problems with the Silmarillion generally, though I think they could be overcome if approached well. The story of Beren and Luthien, if it's pushed cleverly enough, would have the possibility of attracting people who normally like other genres. You can sell it as fantasy, adventure, action, sappy love story, tragedy, girl power (Luthien defies Thingol!) all sorts of things. It would still be an uphill climb, but you could do it. Turin, unfortunately, has none of those aspects (at first glance, I mean - short reviews, and so forth) except for tragedy. That is, the tragedy will be by far the most vivid thing in peoples' memories afterwards. The number of pure tragedy junkies out there is not large. Tragic love story might do it, but Turin would not do too well in that department unless the filmmakers decided to pull off a moment straight out of "Der Blonde Eckbert" and hide Turin and Nienor's sibling status from the audience until the very end. This would probably lead to bad word-of-mouth - if you go to see a tragic love story, and it turns out that it involves the putative hero accidentally sleeping with his sister, you'll probably feel that you've been sold a bill of goods no matter how well it was done. Like it or not, most peoples' initial reaction to that sort of thing is not "How tragic!" but "EEEWW!" Yes, they'll probably revise their opinions later, but they're not going to forget that first impression.<P>Basically, my take on it is that if Oedipus Rex (one of my favourite plays) hasn't been able to make it on the silver screen, there's no way Turin can do it. With the double handicap of the Silmarillion Factor plus the Incest Factor - no. <P>Sorry, didn't mean to be so longwinded. I'm not trying to be rude or patronizing or anything; I certainly think that the average moviegoer is far more intelligent than the studios generally give him credit for, but on the other hand I also recognize that the average moviegoer is probably not going to have my specific tastes - their intelligence can run in other directions. They would have to be sold on this movie as hard as anyone would be.<p>[ 10:50 PM December 28, 2003: Message edited by: Kalimac ]