We're finally getting our movie version of The Hobbit...by the same creative team that brought us The Lord of the Rings.
They're actually going to do two Hobbit movies...the first one will be a straight-up adaptation of The Hobbit. For the second one, they're going to cull through all the notes, appendices, and annotations that JRR Tolkien made to create something that bridges the gap between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Peter Jackson and his partner (both creatively and romantically) Fran Walsh have signed on to executive produce...no word yet on whether Jackson will direct, although we have been promised that Jackson will be involved creatively.
They want filming to begin in 2009. Just like Lord of the Rings, the two films will be made simultaneously, with The Hobbit due out Christmas 2010, and The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings Filler in Christmas 2011.
In case you don't understand why this is so huge, The Hobbit has been involved in a legal quagmire, that was only made worse when The Lord of the Rings was a huge hit and thus everyone wanted to make The Hobbit.
Quagmire run down: OK, so New Line made Lord of the Rings. Movie rights to The Hobbit were owned by MGM. They started suing each other for The Hobbit. Meanwhile, Peter Jackson felt that he got screwed out of some of the profits for The Fellowship of the Ring. That eventually degenerated into Jackson and New Line suing each other. But they assure us that all legal stuff is now resolved, and there's nothing stopping them.
In case you don't know, despite the fact that I've never been able to plow through the exposition-dense Lord of the Rings, I do count The Hobbit as one of my favourite books and have read it several times. And based on the climactic battles that each LOTR film had, I can't wait to see the Battle of Five Armies.
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