Jackson To Tackle Epic "Real Time" Bible

Wellington, NZ.  With the release of the first part of his latest epic trilogy nearly upon us, The Hobbit director Peter Jackson has announced today that he’ll be cornering Christmases for years to come with an adaptation of The Bible, to be played out in real time. 

Not content with expanding the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy from the meager 9-hour running time of the theatrical cut, to their atrophy-inducing 12-hour directors cut, and still not quite satisfied with having ballooned King Kong to twice the paltry 100-minute running length of the original, Jackson has recently taken another huge leap forward by expanding JRR Tolkien’s slim volume to not one, not two, but THREE, three hour epics.  This time around the Director, whose movies have been getting exponentially longer since his homespun debut Bad Taste (1987 – 1hr 31mins), has used material from other books, that didn’t even fit into those books, crowbarring it unnecessarily into the slight origin story of Bilbo and The Ring .  This was “in no way, a financial decision”, a spokesman for Legendary Pictures and Wingnut Films coughed quietly under his breath, meeting no one’s eye.  But Jackson’s production partners are not the only ones to come to the heavyweight director’s defense, with Sir Ian McKellan reasoning “If we made one movie, The Hobbit, the fact is that all the fans, the 8-, 9- and 10-year old boys, they would watch it 1,000 times.  Now, they’ve got three films they can watch a thousand times” (actual quote).  

With Jackson already bunkered in his Wellington base not-editing the second/fifth  installment of his Hobbity sextet, it was left to writing partners Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh to announce the trio’s latest venture today.  “It has become our MO at Wingnut Films to bring to the screen projects that most Filmmakers would deem unfilmable.  But if our experience so far with The Rings Trilogy, King Kong and now The Hobbit, ahem, Trilogy has taught us anything, it’s that people will use any excuse to sit down for a REALLY LONG TIME.  So in that tradition we are pleased to announce that once work on The Hobbit, ahem, Trilogy has been completed in 2014 we will begin work on The Greatest Story Ever Told For Ever and Ever, Amen, a complete, unabridged, unedited and seemingly endless retelling of The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.  We are looking at the moment of continuing our tradition of releasing an epic just in time for Christmas and awards season, with Genesis hitting screens Christmas 2016 or so, with subsequent epics bowing every Christmas for the next 73 years, though the Gospels may have to be split in two or three”.  When pressed about how the team would condense the events featured in even the smaller books of The Bible into a manageable running time Walsh hinted that they may go another route, “The events of The Bible, are so Huge, so Awesome, so, so Epic, that to condense them would be doing them a great disservice and you can’t take on a project like this without really wanting to see the material grow, so with that in mind we have considered filming the entire text in real-time, with each movie taking days, weeks, months or even years to screen.  The eventual plan would be that our inevitable Directors Cut would be about 7,000 years in length.  But those details still need to be ironed out.” 

Spokesmen for Legendary Pictures, and New Line, were too busy not saying No to any of Peter Jackson’s suggestions to comment.  The first part of The Hobbit, ahem, Trilogy is released today.

Noonan relabeling Budget 2012 “less ‘Fair’, more ‘Barnum and Bailey’”

Sources close to government have revealed that in a last minute tweak to his annual Yuletide Dreadfest, Axewielder in Chief Michael Noonan has today relabeled this year’s budget as “less ‘Fair’, more like ‘Barnum and Bailey’”.

In the past fortnight, as the government sprung more leaks than Irish pipes in winter, the Limerick Slasher has been repeatedly quoted as saying that this budget would be ‘Fair’, a description increasingly at odds with the content of each new government “KiteFlyeruuhhImean"leak"”.  Sources say that the comment was taken out of context and it’s continual use has been causing ire in the Money Man’s office in the run up to his Big Day.

“That’s not what I said at all”, Mr. Noonan is reported as clarifying, curling up on his huge, cosy pile of money today, “What I said was that this year’s budget would be like a fair.  You know, bells, whistles, swings and roundabouts, and punters losing their shirts on a three cup trick.  As it turns out, in actual fact, the analogy, such as it is, is rather appropriate, in that this year’s budget will be somewhat like a fair, only on a slightly, eh, eh, larger scale.  That perhaps of a Barnum and Bailey-style three ring circus.  You know jugglers, high wire balancing acts, contortionists (of the truth) and ah, a bunch of clowns running around trying to put out the fire with a thimbleful of water”.

Michael “Smaug” Noonan will deliver his Budget Address from The Lonely Mountain at 2.30 today.

Meteorologists Worldwide Confounded by Simultaneous Phenomena

DUBLIN.  The international meteorological community was under a cloud of confusion this morning as they attempted to explain a mass of ecological phenomena which occurred across the globe at exactly the same time.

Met Eireann spokesman Michael Winterbottom explains, “At around 6.00am (GMT) this morning we begun getting reports from across Ireland about strange weather.  Accounts then started coming in from across Europe, then all over the world”.  The reports, he said, consisted mostly of incredibly strong gusts of wind, almost storm force, “But when we looked at our satellite imaging the weather fronts seemed clear.  Thermal imaging however showed massive pockets of warm air rushing in, mostly over densely populated areas”. 

Similar weather patterns were reported across the globe, with parts of the United States particularly badly affected.  In the wake of Hurricane Sandy New Yorkers found themselves once again battered by strong winds.  This time round however the assault was mercifully short.  “That’s probably the strangest part”, Mr. Winterbottom told us, “There was no build up.  This weather didn’t gather, it was just suddenly there.  And then just as quickly it dissipated.  It’s almost as if the entire world let out a massive sigh of relief.  We’ve no explanation for it, but we’re calling it the Mitt Romney effect”.