The Hobbit is ALIVE!!!

Fans of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy who have been waiting forever for the production of the Hobbit can wait no longer. The long awaited bankruptcy holdout between New Line, MGM, and others has been settled.

BBC News - The Hobbit to begin filming in February next year

some key points of the article:

1. Peter Jackson will direct the two part movie
2. shooting will begin in Feb 2011
3. Doesnt say here, but elsewhere I have read that the movies will come out in Dec 2012 and 2013

I can finally stop holding my breath

Wasn't The Hobbit a kiddie book though?

If it ever comes to be I'll see it but somehow I doubt it'll create the same frenzy the Lord of the Rings films did.

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Originally Posted by DMKA

Wasn't The Hobbit a kiddie book though?

If it ever comes to be I'll see it but somehow I doubt it'll create the same frenzy the Lord of the Rings films did.

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It is seen as more of a children's book, but I'm not sure what your point is. Plus I can definitely see it having the same frenzy as the Lord of the Rings films, whether it's as good as they were, that's a different question.

All Dwarves, all the time.

I haven't read it since I was quite a bit younger, but I'm pretty sure it would still hold up.

Hopefully there's less awkward, extended stares in this one.

Article only mentions briefly the troubles with New Zealand, anyone know if they managed to figure out a solution to this aside from going somewhere else to film it?

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Hopefully there's less awkward, extended stares in this one.

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It's Jackson, there won't be a short supply of those. He gets two movies for one book, it'll probably be even worse.

Wow, I always thought this was being produced. I figured it'd be about ready. I never heard there was red-tape trouble and it was supremely delayed. This is kind of retarded. But I guess I'm glad its finally underway. The Hobbit isn't exactly as epic as LotR. But its not necessarily "kiddy". As far as I'm aware its written at the same reading level, and there's still a lot of death and warring. Though I'm not sure Tolkien ever had an age-group in mind. He just started writing. Incidentally it was required reading my senior year of high school

I love this book and hope they do a good job with it.

This is pretty much my favorite book ever and I'm sure it will be well done. I wish I could see it already. :(

What's it about?

I feel like the cartoon film did a good enough job. Do we really need Jackson to make another four hour movie?

Rankin and Bass cartoons were amazing..

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Originally Posted by Shorty

I feel like the cartoon film did a good enough job. Do we really need Jackson to make another four hour movie?

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Yes. :colbert:

I'll probably get some flak for this but I dont understand how J.R Tolkien wrote something as painfully boring to read as Lord of the Rings after writing something as grippingly awesome as The Hobbit.

I hope they dont cut anything out of the Hobbit since imo it was perfect in every way.

I'm glad that Peter Jackson is picking up the slack, as I really didn't want anyone else to do the movies. He had a great thing going on, so why even tamper with that magic? The Extended Versions of the movies are some of the greatest masterpieces ever to grace the silver screen (if only shortly :D).

Another thing I want to point out is that The Return of the King came out in 2003. I know Jackson is a fan of cramming absolutely every last effect into his movies and taking years to do it, but I feel like he should have prepared better with The Hobbit and not waited seven+ years after the Lord of the Rings trilogy to put it out. That seems a bit too long to me - the type from LotR is over.

But Jackson wasn't originally slated to direct The Hobbit, so it's not like he's held off on doing it for years.

See, I didn't know that. I thought I remembered hearing rumors pretty soon after LotR that he'd be doing The Hobbit. But I suppose they were just rumors.

Del Toro (Hellboy, The Orphanage) was supposed to direct The Hobbit a short time after Return of the King came out in theaters or on DVD, I can't remember which exactly. He dropped out because it was taking too long to get it through the different companies they were going through for financial help and then Jackson decided to pick it up after that. There were then a slew of troubles regarding filming location (New Zealand's acting guild or whatever wanted better rights or some such). It wasn't really Jackson's fault that it has been seven years, making a movie isn't really about going to a guy and saying "k this is the movie, this is the information, let's film".

Unless that movie is Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.

I had heard the same thing as Shorty. That as a reward for LotR Jackson was allowed to make whatever he wanted. And he wanted to remake a King Kong. And then he was supposed to go back and do The Hobbit

But I never heard from any official sources or cared enough to look into things

As I understand it, a large portion of the pre-production was completed under Del Toro--costumes, scenery, etc. It's largely been the trouble in New Zealand and, more recently, MGM's descent into bankruptcy.

Yes, from what I've read what ouch says :p

I'm glad that Peter Jackson is directing. I was bummed out when I heard Del Toro wasn't doing it back when he dropped out, 'cause if Jackson wasn't gonna do it (which he wasn't at that point) Del Toro seemed like the only other director out there who'd be able to do it.

But, now that Jackson's decided to do it anyway everything should be dandy. Yay!
- I must say, though, I'd still be interested in seeing Del Toro's version of the book. It'd also have been brilliant, no doubt.

This is a great book, can't wait for it to come out.

I'm looking forward to this one, though I don't know why it needs two movies. Maybe there will be some backstory on Middle Earth in there which should be awesome because I love the history of that place.

I also don't know how they could really make two movies out of it. "The Hobbit" is far less dense than the trilogy and they managed to fit most of the content from the trilogy into the films. Having read the trilogy once since the films it truly blew my mind how faithful the adaptation was (but no Tom Bombadil :( ).

I suppose you could try to squeeze in some bits from "The Silmarillion" but I don't think it would mesh with "The Hobbit" very well. "The Silmarillion" alone could be made into half a dozen movies. If anything deserves a lot of films, that's it, but for most it's too hard to grapple and I don't think it would make a very marketable movie (or series of them) other than using the LOTR name power.