now the legal battle that’s kept The Lord of the Rings’ prequel, The Hobbit, hung up for years — a bitter feud between Rings director Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema co-chairman Robert Shaye — may finally be nearing resolution. For once, there’s reason to be cautiously optimistic. At this writing, no agreements have been announced and details of the negotiations are sketchy (neither New Line nor Jackson’s camp would comment to EW on any aspect of this story), but sources close to the talks tell us that they’re detecting a lot less frost in the air, and that a deal may be reached that could help usher J.R.R. Tolkien’s maiden Middle-earth masterpiece to screens before the end of the decade.
Nothing definite yet, but I, for one, am VERY excited at the mere possibility that Jackson might be directing The Hobbit. And, if he has his way, a film telling the events that took place in the 60 years between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.
I can’t get excited about that. The Hobbit is very childish (and yes…I know that’s intentional) compared to the trilogy. I’d rather see them pick a good story from the Silmarillion (how about Glorfindel…or whoever the badass elf dude was?). The dwarf fight for Moria might be interesting too…the original, obviously…not the one they lost to the goblins.
Jackson was always going to do it, it was just a fight over salary.
All the fighting was just posturing. There was too much money out there for it to end any other way.
My biggest fear has always been that one of the Ians might die before they got around to making a movie, though I guess it’s possible they’d go with someone else for Bilbo anyway, I don’t know.
My second biggest fear is that they catch the John Rhys-Davies fever again, and cast him as like 7 of the dwarves.
I’d like to see Jackson do it if it gets done, but I don’t understand how they will pull it off. Most of the book is Bilbo with the dwarves, and I don’t know how they will differentiate the dwarves enough to make it interesting. Rhys-Davies was buried in that makeup in LOTR; imagine 12 of those.
It’ll be fun to see the reactions of people who watched Gandalf face down a Balrog when he’s stuck up a tree, lighting pine cones on fire and throwing them at wolves.
I’d love to see him do it. I still have a soft spot for The Hobbit, and could see it translating to film very well. Could probably argue that it would translate to film better than the trilogy.
Eh? Were there major events that I’m forgetting which took place in this time period? Not sure how one would make a movie out of that…I’d think the previously suggested Silmarillion would be a better source. A host of Balrogs and a bad guy who dwarfed Sauron’s power could be pretty neat to watch.
Tom Bombadil is in The Hobbit? Cool. What does he do?
I don’t really remember the book much, and it’s possible I never even read it but just heard about it enough as a kid that I feel like I’ve read it. But I can’t imagine it being anything but disappointing after the trilogy. Isn’t The Hobbit a sort of inconsequential aperitif to The Lord of the Rings?
