About a month or two ago I recall reading a report that New Line would ask Jackson to deliver Return of the King a month early for Oscar screening purposes – and I wanted to consider the validity of this report alongside some comments that the trailer was not released due to unfinished effects. (My apologies I do not have a link to the article in question)

For starters we all know by now that the Oscars have been moved up a month, pushing studios to begin their campaigns before the regular December glut, as seen in the past. It would make sense then that New Line would want to screen the film for consideration a month early, especially given that other contenders moved their release dates to November while ROTK was fixed at December.

On the other hand we all know what a crunch post-production will be on this film and it would be a difficult request for the crew to fulfill, given that ROTK is going to be the biggest FX burden of the trilogy. It would make just as much sense to figure that ROTK will go up to the wire.

Now consider the rumors that the trailer was not produced because the FX for King were not near enough to completion. And in light of this I want to raise a few points. Personally I believe the ‘unfinished FX’ theory to be false. New Line wants the Oscar and they don’t want to saturate the market. We’ve had two straight years of Rings everywhere and they don’t want us to be sick of it right when awards time comes near. Smart move. Also gets us to buy the theatrical DVD. But here are the points:

• Jackson has had the MOST time to be working on this film – it’s been in the can for three years. Three years of time to edit and shoot miniatures and run trials on animations and designs.
  
  
• Jackson has had a rough cut of this film longer than any of the previous two. There were reports of the cast seeing rough cuts as early as February. Jackson said last November before TTT even debuted that he had a fine cut of Towers and a rough cut of ROTK. Who knows how long he’s been editing.
  
  
• For TTT there were issues redesigning Gollum, problems animating the Ents – but for ROTK the ground work on these creatures is already done – the team won’t get hung up on the design and early technique of animation, they already know how to do it. Same with MASSIVE. They’ve done Last Alliance and Helm’s Deep – so while Pelennor is a WHOLE different story in terms of size, at least WETA has experience under their belt – there shouldn’t be snags.
  
  
• Jackson has only this film to work on now. 2/3 of the trilogy is already done and over with. The team can now devote all of their resources to JUST worry about this film. Even during Fellowship and Towers we know there was some attention being paid to working on all three films simultaneously (though yes almost all resources were given to the film currently being worked on). I would think this would be a huge relief for Jackson as far as concentration and attention goes.
  
  
• And in that light we have had numerous reports from PJ saying that ROTK is going very well, he loves editing it, the last of the trilogy is his favorite, and everything is running smoothly. Whereas with Towers there were quite a few issues and frustrations had with the big Gollum redesign and the Ent animation.
  
  
• Now consider that we We know that New Line brass flew to NZ last November for a final screening of Towers (Entertainment Weekly article said Jackson delayed that screening over some dispute with NL –but the important issue is that the film was fairly complete in early NOV). I also recall reading sometime in November that WETA crew had turned in the final effects for Towers. Seems reasonable given that prints and distribution does take some time.
  
  
• Now consider that we saw a FOTR teaser in May/June 2001 with solid FX – Moria, Eye of Sauron, looked good to me. TTT added footage in March/April 2002 had Helm’s Deep FX shots and that famous Gollum shot creeping down the cliff face.

So I would have to say that in light of the way things are going for the post-production team with ROTK, the film SHOULD be MORE finished at this stage in July than the previous two were at the same time of the year. And given those points I would have to think that if Jackson came up with a 4-minute preview of TTT in March/April of 2002, he should easily be able to make a teaser in July for ROTK – especially since he obviously has the DVD preview of ROTK done now. It’s going to be screened at Comic-con in a matter of days, and if the DVD will be in stores in a month, that preview must have been assembled some time ago.

So – the teaser was NOT not released because of unfinished FX – it’s a marketing move all the way. … but that brings us to my original question. It seems perfectly reasonable to think that New Line would ask for this film to be delivered a month early to meet the early awards season needs. I don’t think ROTK will go to the wire. That raises several issues, including the horror that would be if ROTK pirated prints started hitting the net weeks before the movie opened… wonder how that would affect the promotion of the film.