Okay. So according to this article, Peter Jackson will be involved in The Hobbit after all. Sounds like he’ll be a producer though and not a director, but I suspect he’ll get his hands dirty at some point in the production. This is something I’m happy about.
As for the WTF?!?! Reading the article I came across something passing strange. Let me quote the passage for you and see if you catch it.
A press release has been issued with regards to the long-anticipated big-screen adaptation of The Hobbit, and it looks like Peter Jackson will indeed be involved as an executive producer on both The Hobbit and a sequel.
Did you catch it?
Here. Let’s look at it again and this time I’ll highlight the part that made my mind boggle.
A press release has been issued with regards to the long-anticipated big-screen adaptation of The Hobbit, and it looks like Peter Jackson will indeed be involved as an executive producer on both The Hobbit and a sequel.
Last I checked, the sequel to The Hobbit was called The Lord of The Rings and they already made those movies. Honestly. What the living hell are they talking about? Okay. I could possibly see them splitting the book into two seperate movies but then again it’s not that big of a book to begin with. It’s half the size of Fellowship and they managed to fit that into a single movie (albeit a 3hr one).
While I’m happy enough to just wait and see how this pans out, there’s part of me that’s filled with righteous indignation at all the money grubbing bastards at New Line. I suppose I should wander over to The One Ring.net and see what they have to say about this.
As you were.
The dirt that I found on the net indicates the second film will not be based on any one book, but instead be based on the appendices of LOTR to connect the events of TH to LOTR. I expect to see the White Council, Necromancer, Aragorn adventures, etc.
*grumble* For some reason that doesn’t sit well with me. Maybe I’m just too much of a purist. I’d rather just have the movies as they stand than someone’s interpretation of vagaries and footnotes.
Meanwhile, I’ve read numerous things that suggest Jackson wants to split the Hobbit into two films, so as not to miss anything.
The Hobbit is about 2/3rds the size of Fellowship, and in all fairness, they cut out fully a third of that book.
Also, most of the fight scenes in the Hobbit happen fast, with the final battle being minimal. With Jackson involved, those could be great scenes, but much longer than in the book, so I can see it as a pair of films.
I thought about that, but it didn’t make sense to me. Where do you make the division? At the Misty Mountains? Nothing happened really before that except Mutton and the Orcs. At Beorn? Well, you have the Warg scene slip in, but kind of a boring place to break. At the arrival at Laketown? Not much left of the story at that point except the Battle of 5 Armies.
I would say that they should split it at the escape from the Mirkwood spiders, or just before. They could go for the cliffhanger with everyone but Bilbo captured by spiders and start from there.
At that point, you still have the Mirkwood Elves scene, the escape from that, the Laketown arrival, them trying to figure out how to get into the Lonely Mountain, Bilbo’s interaction with Smaug, and then the Battle of Five Armies (which was, to be fair, not very interestingly written in the book).
With that split, they could probably make two very decent 2 hour movies.