Word: lord
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...Ping's Warriors of Heaven and Earth. This week, Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Bombay Dreams, for which Rahman wrote the music, transfers from London's West End to Broadway. And Rahman is currently writing songs for another big-budget West End production, a musical version of The Lord of the Rings. These projects are forcing Rahman out of his usual milieu. He says he knew nothing about Western musicals until he wrote Bombay Dreams and initially didn't even like the two Lord of the Rings movies that he watched before agreeing to do the project, saying he found...
...Sufi, Irish folk, rock, reggae, even ragtime. And the outside world is discovering that beneath the tabla and synthesized sitar, his music isn't strictly subcontinental. "The sound of Middle Earth has to be a unique sound," says West End producer Kevin Wallace, who chose Rahman to score The Lord of the Rings. "And Rahman is a great classical composer who has also absorbed different cultures to produce searingly beautiful melodies. Once you have heard his melodies, you can't forget them...
...even admits to being terrified by the Lord of the Rings job, but producer Wallace is confident that Rahman will come through. "It is very clear to me he knows how to take direction and briefing," he says. "He responds to story, he responds to character, and he knows the music has to enhance the drama...
...subject, we know, was the Middle-earth wars. J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings books handed Jackson a quest story involving dozens of exotic species and hundreds of dreamlike or infernal settings. Over a seven-year stretch in his native New Zealand, Jackson brought this vast canvas to life, eventually earning nearly $3 billion in movie theaters and oodles more on home formats. He blended live action and computer animation in a way that could not have been realized, or even imagined, 10 years ago. Just as important, the trilogy infused the fantasy genre with a grace...
Today the project sounds golden. But Hollywood didn't always think so. Disney-Miramax rejected Jackson's proposal, even at a compromised two-film length. The front-office pooh-bahs may have recalled the failure of Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings, also in two parts (the second half was never made). For less remote box-office evidence, potential sponsors had only to measure the $300 million Jackson needed to make the trilogy against the measly $35 million or so his five previous features had earned worldwide...