Next Xmas, feast on Masked Hobbit Pi!

Forget the US Summer Blockbuster season, Christmas 2012 promises to be a formidable fist fight with three studio horses primed to win the all important Yuletide race.

Johnny Depp’s reinvention of the ‘Tonto’ character in Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger, alongside The Social Network’s Armie Hammer as the title character, is Disney’s contender now slated for Dec 21, 2012. In what promises to be a different take on the popular ’50s TV serial, Depp insists he’s no secondary character; “I remember watching as a kid, with Jay Silverheels and Clayton Moore, and going: ‘Why is the f—ing Lone Ranger telling Tonto what to do?’”, the 48-year-old star (birthday today!) recently told Entertainment Weekly. Jerry Bruckheimer’s marketing magic behind the Disney theme ride that is ‘Pirates’ will be rushing the manufacturers of Indian head wear, feathers, colt revolvers and black masks in time for release – no doubt.

Then, of course, there’s Peter Jackson’s final Tolkien juggernaut, The Hobbit. Released in two parts with a year’s grace in-between, “An Unexpected Journey” and “There and Back Again” brings the band back together with Jackson in the top seat after Guillermo del Toro’s departure; Elijah Wood as Frodo, Orlando Bloom back as the arrow-firing she/he Legolas and Sir Ian McKellen as pipe-smoking, staff-wielding, beard-swinging Gandalf to mention but a few. Newcomers to the franchise include Stephen Fry, Lee Pace and rumours of Leonard Nimoy as the voice of Smaug the Dragon (cool!). Roadshow’s Christmas drinks next year are sure to rival Film Victoria’s recent ‘shout’, that’s for sure.

Thirdly, it’s fantasy of a different kind with Ang Lee’s 3D adaptation of Yann Martel’s best-selling Life of Pi with Tobey Maguire as the US addition to a star-studded Indian cast. The Man Booker prize-winning story details a precocious young boy shipwrecked with his only fellow survivors being a zebra, hyena, orangutan and a 400-pound Bengal tiger called Richard!? No this isn’t the Disney one, it’s Fox. Recently moving away from The Hobbit’s release of Dec 14, to now instead compete with The Lone Ranger, Ang Lee’s box office history doesn’t bode well regardless of the subject matter.

With Jackson’s proven record on Tolkien, an in-built fan base of everyone and close to a decade between Middle-Earth drinks (not to mention a solid week of WOM prior to the other two films release) one would have to back the NZ production as the clear winner overall. Expect either Disney or Fox to re-think their release dates to 2013 the second Jackson releases a few Hobbit jpegs online in the coming months.