[Peter Morwood]

Go to http://www.ring-of-the-nibelungs.com/

Click on Profiles then on Writers.

It finally happened. It's finally real.

Wow...

[Thomas McDonald]

Congratulations, Peter & Diane, that is awesome !

I luv saying I have screen writers & authors as friends, ;-) Cheers, Mac

[Patrick Kelly]

Yes, congratulations to you both! I know you must be very excited.

I love these "Dark Age" stories. It's one of my fave periods don't you know? Between this and the new Beowulf movie this may be a good coming year.

Do you know if this will be called Ring of the Nibelungs? The press release entitles it Kingdom in Twighlight.

It's great to hear from you Peter

[Chad Arnow]

I hope you intend to use Wagner's score in its entirety as the soundtrack. C'mon, it's only 14 hours or so....

Seriously, congrats!

[Nate C.]

Allow me to add my congratulations. Although I've never actually read the story, I do enjoy Wagner's music. The production looks beautiful from a visual aspect. I can't really comment on the story since I've only seen the 7 min. version with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd (Speawr and magic hewmet [a true classic ]).

Congrats again,

[Jeremy Scott Steimel]

Congratulations!

If the what's available on the website is any kind of hint of things to come, this project has climbed up to the top of my "To See" list.

Best of luck.
-Jeremy

[Nate C.]

Quick question: how does this thing end? I.E. good triumphs or bad rules all ? I realize I may be asking too much of a myth from this genre but I'd just like to know since I can't find a story synopsis for some reason.

Thanks,

[Douglas G.]

NEATO!
This is so cool! Just the one question. Every time I've gone up to Seattle (2) for the
Ring cycle, I always do better closing my eyes so, for example Parzival seems heroic
rather than a guy who lives above a Burger King. If you use Dick W's tunes, will the
singers be off camera? I very much look forward to seeing the film

Best,
Doug G.

[Björn Hellqvist]

Nice to see what you've been up to! Congrats on bagging that project - the production looks lavish!

[Patrik Erik Lars Lindblom]

WOW!
Congratulations Peter, that one must i see,
nice stuff they have built up in that hall to look at, and miss Kristanna Løkken to

[Stephen Wittsell]

When will this be in theatres?

The look & feel of the project is spectacular!

Congratulations,

Lynn

[Lloyd Clark]

Congrats! That is fantastic and I am looking very forward to seeing the movie.

[Craig Johnson]

Looks Great mate!

Fantastic news. I can not wait to see the result.

Give my best to Diane and a glass raised to you both, Though I am out of the Good stuff :-)

Craig

[Joel Whitmore]

It's nice to see someone we know become a fancy Hollywood scriptwriter Congratulations and I wish you tons of success in the future. I can't wait to see this one.


Joel Whitmore

[Peter Morwood]

Here's an attempt to answer various questions in a single post (and being lazy, or at least a bit busy this evening - see bottom - the basic post is much the same as posted elsewhere.)

First off, thanks from both of us for all the congrats! We're still in a mixture of smug: "We did it, so there, ha-ha ha-ha"; satisfied: "We did it well, and studio interference won't change that"; and disbelieving "We really, actually did it..."

Boring viewing details:
The TV version - I keep referring to it as a miniseries, it's actually more a two-part x 2 hr (incl. commercial time) TV movie - will be first transmitted by Germany's SAT-1 network on 29th and 30th November. AFAIK the only theatrical release will be early next year in the UK (probably London) - this has something to do with the complexities of movie financing, about which (I'm happy to say) I know next to nothing! Thereafter, it'll be shown by UK's Channel 4 (again, they were involved in the finance) and after that, who knows? Possibly Sky-1; it may also be released or broadcast in Japan, and as for the US market, it'll probably be on cable or PBS. It's more likely a straight-to-DVD production.

Does that disappoint Diane and myself? No way! So many productions never get anything like this far: Steven Pressfield's Thermopylae novel Gates of Fire was optioned at one stage, got sufficiently high-profile that George Clooney was involved, and now seems to have vanished again.

We were at the press screening in Hamburg, and everyone seemed to like it - in particular, it was nice to hear a hard-nosed executive from VIP MediaFonds say that the emotion of the drama got to him in at least three places (despite having seen various rough cuts on several earlier occasions.) Kristanna Løken told us personally that when she received the script and started to read it, she only put it down once and that was because she had to break for the bathroom; if our writing was good enough to interfere with a movie star's body functions, I guess it was pretty good! We'll be at another screening (the official premiere?) in Munich by which time final tweaks, mostly involving music, will have taken place.

Patrick - AFAWK the official title is now Ring of the Nibelungs - though there have been several title changes before this, they're running out of time to change it again. (I hope.)

The music, incidentally (or should that be the incidental music...?) has been composed for Nibelungs - it doesn't use anything by Wagner, whose music was composed to accompany a somewhat different story.

As mentioned, we met Kristanna, who is just as cute off-screen as on (and tall! Pity she's no longer wearing Brunnhild's long blonde hair, but she's working on another movie that involved a cut-and-dye.) I was able to get a quick snap of her posing with my version of Siegfried's sword Balmung, a period-appropriate DT-2071. I wish the photo was better quality, but it was the only thing possible: she was tearing about from interview to interview, as were we, and the only photo-op involved the built-in camera of my PDA; I didn't have time to find Diane, who had the bigger digicam in her purse. Still, not bad... (It'll be posted ASAP, promise.)

Nate - the original story was a tragedy. So is this. Not a happy ending, but we hope a bitter-sweet one. At least, that's how we wrote it (and it seems to work, if that VIP-Media exec was anything to go by.)

Re. sword stuff in Nibelungs: the swordplay is adequate; I suppose you could call it standard movie stuff (could have been a lot better, could have been much worse). There's a nice spear-vs.-sword combat, where though the spear-work has a bit of an Eastern flavour for my taste, Kristanna's dance-training makes it look like she knows more than usual about what she's doing. As for an earlier fight with axes, there are a couple of shots where D and I were wondering what Sam West had said to get her so furious...!

Craig - it looks increasingly likely that we'll be coming in for MinniCon this Easter; so your drought of the Good Stuff can be put right. We'll be in touch nearer the time.

What really, really pleased me was the "making of Balmung" sequence. There was an initial insistence that the "molten-metal-into-mould" opening of Conan the Barbarian made a very visual image, and so... To which my response was of course "Only if it's bronze, guys, and even then you need a closed mould...!" But after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, with me sending books to Germany and South Africa, the end result was that molten metal was poured into moulds to make rods of iron after which Benno Fürmann (Siegfried) twists the rods together and hammers them into a pattern-welded blade. It's not a completely accurate representation, but IMO looks better than most cinematic sword-forging - and is a vast improvement on the alternative. (BTW, I'm really grateful to the production folks - letting me get involved to that extent went well beyond what writers are usually allowed. I'm also grateful to Uli Edel, the director, because he didn't have to pay any attention, and he did.)

I should stop now, before this starts to sound like an Oscar-acceptance speech.

Joel - not quite Hollywood yet; with a German/British/South African co-production, more like Hollyvaldt!

It's my birthday today, so there's a restaurant and a few drinks waiting for me somewhere. But I don't think I'll get another present like this in my life. You only ever do the first time once.

Cheers!

[Roger Hooper]

That must be a great feeling, Peter ---- to see the tangible result of an artistic dream, when it could have gone bad in so many ways.

[Björn Hellqvist]

I broached the subject in a Swedish forum, and a guy that described himself as "the biggest Peter Morwood fan in Sweden" was tickled pink when he heard that you are involved. If and when the series finds its way over here, I hope to tape it.

[Patrik Erik Lars Lindblom]

A trailer are up.
Looks great
http://www.ring-of-the-nibelungs.com/

[Alex Yeoh]

congrats Pete! I hope to be recognized too one day, although for me writing is a hobby for now. My current work is an RPG game expansion:

www3.telus.net/alexyeoh/superlativedw.htm

I even managed to get a Disney artist 'Christophe Vacher' to donate artwork for the world I created. I think regardless of whether you are a writer of a screenplay, you are a published writer nonetheless and that is an achievement to be proud of.

[Patrik Erik Lars Lindblom]

DVD - Curse of the Ring - 177min
I have order one but not get it yet