Brian Cox Goes Short For “Hobbit”?

Brian Cox is said to be a big contender to play a dwarf in Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” says AICN.

The story follows Bilbo Baggins as he first encounters Gandalf and is somewhat unwillingly swept off on an adventure to the lonely mountain to rid it of the dragon, Smaug.

The dragon is guarding a treasure of enormous value that he had firstly taken from the dwarves who once lived there. A major battle shortly, ensues.

The film is scheduled to hit theatres in November 2011.

The Mouse’s Surprise Hong Kong Rival

HONG KONG — As Mickey Mouse heads north from Hong Kong to Shanghai, he runs the risk of being followed by his Asian nemesis: Whiskers the Sea Lion.

Whiskers is the mascot of Ocean Park, a 32-year-old Hong Kong theme park that was widely expected to wither with the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland four years ago. But Ocean Park has unexpectedly thrived instead and is now reviewing requests for franchised theme parks from cities across Asia and the Middle East — including Shanghai, where the Walt Disney Co. has just obtained permission to open its next theme park.

Hong Kong Disneyland has stumbled repeatedly, starting as Disney’s smallest theme park and disastrously miscalculating the dates of the Chinese New Year during a promotion. Disney even took the unusual step of forgoing some fees at the theme park, a joint venture with the Hong Kong government, when attendance fell short of expectations. Ocean Park has emphasized its Hong Kong and Chinese ties and gained attendance even in the first year after Mickey Mouse arrived in Hong Kong, when it had budgeted for a 25 percent slump in visitors.

“I wasn’t really trying to kill the Mouse, but I think they didn’t really understand the culture and got it wrong,” said Allan Zeman, the 61-year-old chairman of Ocean Park, who has repeatedly grabbed the spotlight from Hong Kong Disneyland with stunts like d being shot out of a cannon.

Cities in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and across China have asked Ocean Park to open theme parks, Mr. Zeman said. Ocean Park is less likely to consider Shanghai until after the new Disneyland has been built and its performance can be assessed, he added.

Overseas expansion of Ocean Park would also require the Hong Kong government to change an ordinance governing the park, which was built for the city by a local nonprofit group. The government is reviewing the ordinance.

Disney is already taking steps that suggest it has learned lessons from its experience in Hong Kong. The Shanghai theme park is slated to be enormous when it opens — 400 hectares, or 1,000 acres — instead of starting small and gradually adding one or two attractions a year, as Hong Kong Disneyland has done. The Shanghai park also has a somewhat less remote location than Hong Kong Disneyland — although neither can rival Ocean Park, a 10-minute drive from the Hong Kong business district.

A spokeswoman for Hong Kong Disneyland said that design work for the new Shanghai theme park, announced late Tuesday in Burbank, California, would probably be done separately from Hong Kong Disneyland. She declined to discuss competition with Ocean Park.

When Hong Kong Disneyland opened in September 2005, it had an image as the Wal-Mart of theme parks — the American Goliath that would put local competitors out of business.

But organizers of mainland Chinese tour groups complained that the park was expensive, while Hong Kong residents groused that the park was aimed mainly at very young children. It has only one fairly large roller coaster, Space Mountain, while Ocean Park has three and is building more; Hong Kong Disneyland does not have animal attractions like the dolphin shows at Ocean Park or its four giant pandas.

Hong Kong Disneyland’s most memorable miscue came when it failed to allow for the full length of the mainland’s Chinese New Year holiday five months after it opened and made it possible to use discount tickets on the last three days of the holiday. Faced with throngs of visitors who were flooding the park, Disney security guards shut the front gates so quickly to halt the flow that a very unhappy young child was separated from his family and passed by the crowd over the green spikes atop the gate. The scene replayed over and over on local television.

Ocean Park had 3.68 million visitors in 2004, the last full year before Hong Kong Disneyland opened, and 5.03 million last year. Hong Kong Disneyland does not report annual figures but said it had seen over 17 million visitors from its opening through the end of May 2009 — or an average of about 4.5 million visitors a year.

Ocean Park has stressed its combination of exhibits of pandas and other Chinese wildlife and more exciting rides than Hong Kong Disneyland’s.

National Geographic Kids magazine rated Ocean Park several years ago as the second “wildest” theme park outside the United States, trailing only a rival in Queensland, Australia.

“Ocean Park is more fun — Disneyland is more for kids,” said Frankie Tong as he admired the pandas at Ocean Park on Wednesday morning while celebrating his 38th birthday at the park with his wife, Mandy Ma. “Disneylands are more or less the same in places all over the world — Disney is more American.”

But Disneyland continues to enthrall the very young. Sam Wong, a 40-year-old civil servant, took his 5-year-old son, Keith, to Ocean Park because he thought it would be educational. Keith Wong said he would rather go to Disneyland, adding wistfully, “Disney has Mickey Mouse.” – NYTimes, By KEITH BRADSHER, 11/4/2009

Legoland

The Carlsbad, Calif., City Council approves a plan for a 254-room Lego-themed hotel outside the park entrance. The California Coastal Commission also must approve the proposal.

Visitors to Legoland in Carlsbad view a scaled-down version of the U.S. Capitol with marching band. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)The building at Legoland continues. Only two months after announcing plans to add a water attraction at the theme park in Carlsbad, Calif., Legoland has won approval from the city of Carlsbad to build a Lego-themed hotel on the property. The Carlsbad City Council approved a plan last week to build a 254-room hotel outside the entrance to the park. The plan must also win approval from the California Coastal Commission, which regulates construction along the state’s coast. A final price tag and a construction timeline are pending approval by the commission, said Julie Estrada, a spokeswoman for Legoland. But she said the hotel would adopt the Lego theme throughout the building, including Lego-designed carpeting and wallpaper. “You’ll feel like you are staying in Legoland,” she said of the hotel. Despite the recession and a decline in tourism spending, Legoland has continued to expand the theme park in recent years. Last summer, the park added a 36,000-square-foot, two-story aquarium that houses more than 200 species of sea life. In September, the park submitted plans to the city to build a 5.5-acre water attraction in the park’s northern section. Merlin Entertainments Group, which owns Legoland, wants to add to and expand the park on a regular basis to draw visitors and encourage them to stay longer, Estrada said. – By Hugo Martín, LATimes, 11/3/2009

Sweet