When it comes to talking about cursed projects, none will ever top Terry Gilliam's attempts (notice the plural) to make a film adaptation of Don Quixote. How many movies do you know that can boast a documentary about its production's epic collapse? But while nothing will ever take away Gilliam's top prize in the category, The Hobbit is giving it a damn good run for its money.
Deadline is reporting that a fire struck Peter Jackson's New Zealand workshop set on Friday. According to the report, fifty firefighters were on the scene to try and quell the blaze, which lasted for three hours before finally dying down. Absolutely everything inside of the building was destroyed.
Let's take a quick overview of The Hobbit's pre-production stage, shall we? First MGM went broke, delaying the project indefinitely. Next, Guillermo del Toro, who had dedicated a great deal of time to the film and co-wrote the script with Jackson, Philippa Boyens, and Fran Walsh, decided to abandon his directing duties in favor of doing another project. Then, just as MGM started to get its act together and found an interested buyer in Spyglass Entertainment, union issues in New Zealand came up and may result in Jackson being forced to move the production to Eastern Europe. Perhaps I'm wrong. Maybe Gilliam does have some competition in the "Most Cursed" category.
