Until today I'd never even heard of Inkheart, but judging from the way people are suddenly flocking to it, it's a big deal.

Inkheart is the next fantasy film from New Line Cinema. You know, the only studio with the balls to do three back to back Lord of the Rings movies. The sad thing is it'll probably be decades before they can duplicate that success, and meanwhile we'll have to sit through years and years of shitty fantasy film attempts to recapture the LOTR lightning in a bottle.

Like Harry Potter or Eragon or Lemony Snicket or His Dark Materials this is another fantasy film ripped from a children's book. As a novel, "Inkheart" spent 19 weeks on the New York Times "Children's Chapter" best seller list, which is kind of like a best seller list for books too lame for adults to read. Harry Potter doesn't need handicapping to sound popular, it just is.

The movie will be the story of a girl whose father has the power to bring characters from books to life just by reading the story aloud. When a villainous ruler leaps out of a kid's fairytale with his band of dastardly rogues and kidnaps the girl's dad, she gathers together real and imaginary friends to rescue him.

The big breaking news on the project is that they've started rounding up a cast. The trades are reporting that Brendan Fraser and Paul Bettany have been cast in leading roles. Bettany will play a fire-eater named Dustfinger, and Fraser will play the girl's fairytale powered father.

What New Line, and nearly every other studio not blessed with Harry Potter on their payroll, is missing in their attempt to recapture LOTR gold is that it wasn't a children's book. They're trying to duplicate its success by filming every semi-successful kids book they can find, but Lord of the Rings was a book written for both kids and adults. None of these books really cross that age boundary and they're doomed to end up at best, like Lemony Snicket. In theaters, out of theaters, and quickly forgotten. Sure, a few adults might read "His Dark Materials" but it's not the literary institution that Tolkien's work is. Nothing like that exists except Narnia, and that's already taken. The success of Lord of the Rings can't be duplicated and it certainly isn't going to be duplicated by Inkheart.