On the eve of the premiere: Tolkien's heirs spoke against the biopic about the writer

The family of the author of The Lord of the Rings, John R. R. Tolkina said she did not support the creation of a new biographical film about the writer's youth. About this writes The Guardian.

As the newspaper notes, the heirs of the writer did not participate in the creation of the biopic, and also emphasize that "neither the picture itself nor its content is approved."

At the same time, a representative of the Tolkien family in an interview with The Guardian noted that the statement was made in order to clarify the position of the writer's relatives regarding the film House Karukoski. It should not be taken as an intention to go to court. Tolkien's biographer John Garth explained the position of the family.

“For biopic is characterized by a very arbitrary treatment of the facts, and this case was no exception. Approval by the Tolkien family would give credibility to all sorts of discrepancies and distortions. History would only suffer from this, ”the Guardian quotes him.

In 2011, Tolkien's relatives filed a lawsuit in connection with the release of the novel by American writer Stephen Hillard “Mirkwood: The Story of J.R.R. Tolkien. The central character of the art book was Tolkien himself, who, according to the plot, flies to the USA in order to protect the ancient documents about the hobbit woman Are from evil forces. The dispute was resolved, as Hillard agreed to indicate in the preface that his novel was a work of art that had no relation to the writer's relatives.

Later, Tolkien's heirs were suing Warner Bros., its division of New Line Productions, and the rights to film the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Saul Zeinz.

The plaintiffs stated that the defendants had violated copyrights - they began to produce digital and electronic products based on Tolkien’s books, although this was not provided for by the terms of the contract.

In addition, Tolkien's relatives criticized the film adaptation of the writer's works.

“Tolkien became a monster, absorbed in his own popularity and steeped in the absurdity of our time,” said the writer's son Christopher in an interview with Le Monde in 2012, adding that “commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical value of the work to zero.”

What will be shown in biopic about Tolkien

Back in 2013, Fox Searchlight Pictures studio and Chernin Entertainment reported that they are developing a biopic script based on David Gleason’s script about the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, John Tolkine.

We are talking about the childhood and youth of the writer: his school years, his best friends, with whom Tolkien created a secret society, and meeting with his wife Edith. In addition, the film affects the participation of the writer in the First World War. The filmmakers tried to show how the events of those years influenced the writer, inspiring him to create his own world.

The director's chair was taken by the Finnish actor and director Dom Karukoski, who admitted that he had dreamed of making a biopic about Tolkien since childhood.

“He lived an amazing life. This is a beautiful, exciting story of love and friendship. Much of what I read in the books happened or was of great importance in his life, ”Karukoski said.

The main role in the tape is played by British actor Nicholas Hoult (“X-Men: Days of the Future Past”), and Edith's wife Tolkien Edith played Lily Collins (“With love, Rosie”).

John R. R. Tolkien is an eminent British writer known primarily as the author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, or There and Back. Today he is considered a classic fantasy genre.

In addition to the characteristic romance of wandering, large-scale battles and the majestic world of Middle-earth, Tolkien's novels have a special linguistic originality.

Since childhood, a writer has been interested in linguistics and mythology, and at 14 he became interested in creating new languages. As a schoolboy, he and three friends organized a secret circle called the Tea Club and the Barrovian Society.

It is noteworthy that the speech in the film will go about this society, and not about the informal literary circle "Inkling". His Tolkien, along with his close friend, writer and philologist, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, Clive Lewis, began visiting much later - in the early 1930s.

After studying at university, Tolkien went to war. At the front, he, in particular, participated in the Battle of the Somme River in 1916. After the end of World War I, the writer got a job teaching at the University of Leeds, and after that - at Oxford, where he worked all his life.

The first significant academic work of Tolkien was the preparation of articles on the history and etymology of words on the letter W for the Oxford English Dictionary. Later he took up the study of the Old English epic poem "Beowulf". The translation of the epic Tolkien never published.

In the 1930s, Tolkien began writing The Hobbit, and seven years later he completed the first chapter of the continuation of the story, The Lord of the Rings.