Fox Searchlight and Chernin Entertainment just started filming on “Tolkien,” a biopic of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien, and the rest of the cast is coming together.
Nicholas Hoult (“Mad Man: Fury Road,” “X-Men: Days of Future Past”) plays the young Tolkien in a script by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford, helmed by Finnish director Dome Karukoski.
Click here for a peek from the set.
According to Variety, the film “focuses on the author as he finds friendship, love, and artistic inspiration among a group of classmates prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. He served in the British armed forces from 1916 to 1920, then wrote the three ‘Lord of the Rings’ novels while working at Pembroke College. Tolkien died in 1973.”
This isn’t the first time that Hoult has played a famous author. This year, he starred in “Rebel in the Rye,” released last month, as reclusive writer J.D. Salinger.
In “Tolkien” (apparently once called “A Light in the Darkness”), Lily Collins (“To the Bone”), daughter of rock legend Phil Collins, plays Edith Bratt, the love of Tolkien’s life and his eventual wife (click here for a rundown of their rocky romance).
It’s good news that a major film studio is taking on the life of J.R.R. Tolkien, but there could be some hurdles.
As we all know, Tolkien was a devout cradle Catholic, and his faith was central to his life — including, obviously, during the time period of the movie. Hollywood doesn’t have a great track record in understanding or depicting sincere Catholic belief. I looked through what bio material is available on the writers, and no connection to Catholicism popped up.
But, on the upside, Colm Meaney has been cast as Father Francis Xavier Morgan, whom Tolkien’s mother — the author lost both parents before the age of 12 — assigned as her son’s guardian before her death. Father Francis was also a mentor … and threw some roadblocks into Tolkien’s youthful romance with the slightly older — and Protestant — Edith (she converted before their marriage).
We’ll see how Tolkien’s relationship with Father Francis is handled, and how the priest is portrayed.
On a literary note, while many of Tolkien’s devoted fans are aware of, and embrace, his Catholicism and see echoes of it throughout “The Lord of the Rings” (a k a LOTR), not all do. I recently did a piece for Family Theater Productions’ Faith & Family Media Blog — noting that “The Hobbit” turns 80 this year — that included several videos in which Catholic writer Joseph Pearce and Bishop Robert Barron discuss the author’s faith and how it figured into his works.
Some Facebook commenters on the piece objected to any religious characterization of LOTR, while another insisted that it was actual Norse pagan/Wiccan. So, while Catholics may see LOTR as Catholic, not everybody does.
Leaning too heavily on Tolkien’s Catholicism may peel off some of the dedicated LOTR fans that the filmmakers are counting on as a core audience.
Secular Hollywood is also not good at threading needles like this, at least in recent years. Could get interesting.
Images: Daniele Prati, via Flikr/Wikimedia Commons; Gage Skidmore, via Flickr; Tom Glynn-Carney, Courtesy Syncopy
Don’t miss a thing: head over to my other home, as Social Media Manager at Family Theater Productions; and check out FTP’s Faith & Family Media Blog.
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