The Hobbit??? aka In a highly controversial move...

[Primula Baggins]

I don't hold out much hope for number 1. They would probably decide that the goblins would be the same subspecies as the Moria orcs, since both types live underground.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

But maybe they've gotten enough negative feedback from that aspect of the Moria sequences to stay away from it. It definitely was a lowlight for many, including some (like me) that overall really enjoyed the Moria sequences.

[yovargas]

Was it really the wall-climbing orcs that people hated? I just thought it was the ridiculous numbers surrounding them and the deus ex machine saving them. I had no problem with the orcs themselves.

[Primula Baggins]

The cockroachy orcs didn't bother me, either, yov. Other things did, but not that.

[yovargas]

Yeah. If anything, I'd say I liked their look 'n style more then most of the orcs (I generally wasn't crazy about the orcs).

[Alatar]

I had no problem with the Moria Orcs either. The only thing I disliked there was Gimli's comic turn when the Orcs ran from the Balrog.

[yovargas]

Ha! That's one of a tiiiiny handful of Gimli moments I like!

[Bolg of the North]

In the movie, I loved Moria as a visual spectacle, ( being one of my top 5 passages in the Book, ) but some of the minor changes started to add up for me.

It did not ruin the sequence for me, but rather left me feeling as if they were ready to score big and had to settle for a field goal.

Of course, my personal preference on how I felt those 2 chapters should have been interpreted on screen would have made for an awfully long segment, and would have been unrealistic.

The only item I could not do without was the Orc Chieftain charging in with his spear and pinning Frodo...

[MithLuin]

Yes, my personal "feel" of Moria is of a long, dim, quiet journey, where the stillness and the shadows creep up on you and start to drive you bonkers after awhile. They should all be uneasy and jumpy by the time they get to Mazarbul.....which they should be drawn to like moths to a flame, because it is the first light they have seen in days (other than Gandalf's 'flashlight' staff).

To do this on film would take time, I think. I don't think you can get that stir-crazy feel quickly. Of course, I would speed up the skirmish to compensate....

I wouldn't imagine PJ would "copy" any scenes he's already filmed, but I imagine he would keep the look of the Moria-goblins, who are the same breed as the goblins in the Hobbit. Assuming he has the opportunity to do this, of course

[superwizard]

Yes, my personal "feel" of Moria is of a long, dim, quiet journey, where the stillness and the shadows creep up on you and start to drive you bonkers after awhile. They should all be uneasy and jumpy by the time they get to Mazarbul.....which they should be drawn to like moths to a flame, because it is the first light they have seen in days (other than Gandalf's 'flashlight' staff).

That is exactly how I see it too Mith
I would love to see Mirkwood (which for me is totally different than Fagorn) in a movie. The trees shutting out the sun would look amazingly creepy

[Whistler]

Well, it appears that The Hobbit may be forthcoming after all. But this is not altogether good news, especially for Tolkien purists and those who found King Kong overlong and overstuffed. Jackson envisions two Hobbit movies, with "new material" (?) added to pad out the running time. The link is here:

http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,1537662_1_0_,00.html

Or, if you prefer:

Shire Circumstances
Will Peter Jackson make ''The Hobbit''? -- MGM and New Line want the rights to the book by Steve Daly

Over eight grueling years, Peter Jackson turned J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings into a multibillion-dollar franchise. So you'd think that New Line, the studio that financed the LOTR juggernaut (and an EW sister company), would have long since locked up plans to adapt The Hobbit, Tolkien's juvenile-flavored preamble to the trilogy. But a long-simmering rights imbroglio has precluded the movie from coming to fruition — by Jackson or anyone else.

Happily, that conflict seemed to be clearing up last week, when the story broke that MGM — owner of the distribution rights to The Hobbit, but not the rights to the motion picture, which is the property of New Line—was prepared to finance a new film and wanted Jackson to direct. There was just one catch: According to Jackson, nobody at MGM has actually called him. Ever.

''It's been three years since we delivered The Return of the King, ''says the 44-year-old filmmaker. ''In all that time, nobody's ever spoken to us about The Hobbit.... We haven't been thinking about The Hobbit because there's no point getting excited if [New Line and MGM] don't have the rights sorted out.'' Instead, Jackson has turned to overseeing other projects, including exec-producing a movie version of the videogame smash Halo, remaking the WWII flying story The Dam Busters (to be directed by LOTR computer-animation expert Christian Rivers), adapting the fantasy book series Temeraire, and helping out with special-effects work on James Cameron's 3-D opus Avatar.

Jackson himself plans to return to the director's chair for the first time since King Kong with The Lovely Bones, based on Alice Sebold's acclaimed 2002 novel about a murdered girl watching her family from heaven. In fact, when the Hobbit news broke, he had just completed an initial script with partner Fran Walsh and LOTR collaborator Philippa Boyens and was preparing to show it to outside readers. ''We don't want it to be a Hollywood fantasy of the afterlife, bright lights and dry ice and all that stuff,'' says Jackson of Bones. ''I want this to be a journey to becoming a different kind of filmmaker. I want to achieve a movie so different than Kong and Lord of the Rings that it doesn't feel like it was directed by the same person.''

So would one of the busiest — and most in-demand — directors in the film industry actually push back his other highly anticipated work to finish off the last major Middle-earth novel? ''Dunno,'' says Jackson. ''The politics between New Line and MGM have never been shared with us. MGM seemingly wants to partner on the film, but I think New Line would rather buy MGM out and run the movie themselves.'' New Line had no comment at press time, while MGM wouldn't discuss any negotiations with Jackson, only issuing a statement to say that his LOTR success ''makes him the first and most ideal choice for directing The Hobbit.'' But make no mistake: In the wake of MGM's unilateral announcement, Jackson has indeed started thinking about what he might do with The Hobbit. He's especially intrigued by the idea of making two films and inventing new material to fill in gaps in the story, since the plot — about how Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm in the LOTR films) befriends Gandalf (Ian McKellen), falls afoul of the miserable creature Gollum, and comes into possession of that pesky ring—is fairly simplistic compared with LOTR.

In the meantime, Jackson seems puzzled that MGM should court him publicly, but not privately. ''I don't want to complain,'' he says. ''It's nice to wake up and turn on the Internet and see that you're being considered for a movie. But it is kind of curious. I guess I'll just keep watching the Net and see if there's any more news.''

[vison]

[narya]

An hour total of various shots of hiking through various terrains, an hour of spiders, an hour of various cool shots of Smaug swooping and burning things, two hours of the Battle of Five Armies, and an hour of other plot developments. There you have it, six hours of movie. We don't need a troll stampede, thank goodness.

[Athrabeth]

Jackson envisions two Hobbit movies, with "new material" (?) added to pad out the running time.

To be fair, I don't believe it's Jackson who thought up the two movie idea, but rather MGM's PTB. Of course the only reason for this would be for padding out the running time and ensuring more money in the coffers, but the proposal certainly didn't originate with Jackson, who is obviously still out of the official loop on this one.

I can't imagine The Hobbit stretching much beyond a single three-hour movie. Maybe (and a pretty shaky maybe at that) it could be developed as two two-hour movies, allowing for "fleshing out" the whole White Council/Necromancer/Dol Guldor references. But after one hopefully does away with numerous Elvish ditties and Dwarvish dirges and animals walking about serving dinner at Beorn's, there would be ample room for more relevant "padding" that would connect it with the later events in LOTR.

The White Council/Dol Guldor events were somewhat fleshed out by Tolkien himself in other writings, so I have no problem with them being added.

And I must admit that I would dearly love to see Jackson's take on Smaug.

[yovargas]

Ooooh, Smaaaaug.

[truehobbit]

Thanks for posting the article, Whistler!

Jackson envisions two Hobbit movies, with "new material" (?) added to pad out the running time.

Charmingly reminiscent of the 1929 "The Taming of the Shrew“,
„by William Shakespeare, with additional dialogue by Sam Taylor“, isn't it?

Maybe some of the features missing in LOTR will be found in here.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I merged Whistler's thread from the Cottage forum into this existing thread.

[TheTennisBallKid]

PJ and Quint at AICN....

QUINT: I saw in Variety that THE HOBBIT came up. The MGM thing. Did you see this?

PETER JACKSON: Where the guy who runs MGM was announcing their tentpoles and saying they were doing TERMINATOR 4 and they want me to make 2 HOBBIT films? I was reading that this morning on the net. It's a rather strange thing to wake to. I'm up for it, but somebody should phone me because I'm getting a bit booked out at the moment!

Everybody asks me about THE HOBBIT, you know? But the reality is I've never had a conversation with anybody about it. Not one person has ever made a phone call to me. I don't know. The irony is that we're acquiring our own projects now and we're buying the rights to books. The reality is, to be quite honest with you, we're getting ourselves now nice and busy, in a good way, for the next 4 years. So, people have not (spoken to us) about THE HOBBIT and it's making it more and more impossible for us to be involved.

QUINT: So, if you got a phone call tomorrow telling you that you could have any budget you need and creative freedom, but it has to be finished and in theaters by December 2009. Would you find room for THE HOBBIT?

PETER JACKSON: Well, it depends. No one has phoned me, which is kind of weird, but I don't know. We're very, very excited and committed about the films that we're working on now, so I don't know. I'd have to sit down and look at it all. Obviously, I'm interested in THE HOBBIT, but right now we have no emotional investment in it. For the last few years, we have put our hearts into other projects. It would seem strange to have somebody else do it, although some part of me would be interested in going to see somebody else's HOBBIT, be able to buy my popcorn and go and sit and watch the film.

I'm not against that and if our schedule is impossible, then that's what they'll do. They'll certainly go and get someone else to make it. They won't wait, which is their right.

QUINT: Could your lawsuit against New Line be a problem?

PETER JACKSON: No. It's a seperate thing. I mean, I can't discuss the law suit, but it is just about rather dull audit issues, not people or projects. New Line called us about a Lord of the Rings box set a few weeks ago. A high definition one, so we are still talking.

QUINT: Maybe they will offer a settlement that includes The Hobbit.

PETER JACKSON: No. Well, they might, but we would never do that. Never. You make movies because you love the idea. You feel kind of emotionally driven. I would never commit to a 2 or 3 year project because of a court order! I mean, what a jinx. It would bring bad karma. No, our dull audit stuff can get figured out by lawyers or courts or whatever. We'll keep our movies completely untarnished by that.

QUINT: I think no matter what you should write some dialogue for Christopher Lee and pack up the robe, staff and beard and go film about 10 minutes with him playing Saruman again while you still have the chance!

PETER JACKSON: I would love to! If I was doing THE HOBBIT I'd try to get as many of the guys back as I could. I mean, there's actually a role for Legolas in THE HOBBIT, his father features in it, obviously Gandalf and Saruman should be part of it. There's things that you can do with THE HOBBIT to bring in some old friends, for sure. I have thought about it from time to time... Elrond, Galadriel and Arwen could all feature. Elves have lived for centuries. Part of the attraction would be working with old friends. I wouldn't want to do it unless we could keep a continuity of cast. I have zero interest in directing a Gandalf who wasn't Ian McKellen for instance. Strange to be even talking about it, for three years it's been in this rights situation limbo.

QUINT: They must have figured it out.

PETER JACKSON: It looks that way. I've always thought that New Line would go to MGM and offer them some money and basically buy them out, then New Line would make the film. But I can see what MGM is doing. If I was MGM I'd do the same thing. What MGM is gotta be saying is, "Well, we'll partner in the film with you. We'll pay for half of it and you pay for half of it and we'll share it." That's what studios do a lot with these films. If I was MGM, I'd think that was the smart thing to do. "We'll share the rights," and actually become a partner in what is already a successful franchise.

It must create problems for New Line because they have all these output deals with these independent guys, who did a great job releasing LORD OF THE RINGS in all the different (foreign) territories. They release a package of New Line films over 2 or 3 years and they get 20 films or whatever. And I'm sure that New Line would prefer to offer their partners 20 films plus THE HOBBIT as part of the package, so MGM might be taking domestic and New Line international. I really have no idea, but it's interesting to see how the politics works. That stuff intrigues me. They must have figured out something I guess. I mean, there's too much money involved. If I was the Time/Warner board, I would have been hassling New Line for a Hobbit film for the last three years! It's a billion dollar franchise for the studio.

QUINT: And I'm sure they'd love the idea of two HOBBIT films. Twice the box office, more DVDs to sell...

PETER JACKSON: I saw that. Yeah, we're supposed to be writing The Lovely Bones, but of course Phil, Fran and I read the thing on the net and spent most of this morning talking about The Hobbit. We think the two film idea is really smart. One of the problems with The Hobbit is that it is a fairly simple kids story, and doesn't really feel like The Lord of the Rings. Tonally I mean. It's always may be a little worried, but with two films that kinda gets easier. It allows for more complexity. At that implied stuff with Gandalf and the White Council and the return of Sauron could be fully explored.
That's what we talked about this morning. Taking The Hobbit and combining it with all that intigue about Sauron's rise, and the problems that has for Gandalf. It could be cool. That way, it starts feeling more like The Lord of the Rings and less like this kids book. You could even get into Gollum's sneaking into Mordor and Aragorn protecting The Shire. That's what we'd do. Love to work with Viggo again.

Anyway, we talked for a while and got back into the Lovely Bones. As I said, that's where our hearts are at the moment. We're extremely happy with the projects we're involved in now and we're busy for a few years. I really have no idea. If someone else makes it, I'll be first in line! Actually, I'd try to be, but Philippa is the Queen of the Geeks and she'd definately get there first!

ttbk

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That actually could be really good.

[MithLuin]

The White Council/Dol Guldor events were somewhat fleshed out by Tolkien himself in other writings, so I have no problem with them being added.

CJRT might. Just sayin'.

But no, I agree - if PJ wants to flesh out that part, it'd be interesting, and if he wanted to bring back the elves, Saruman and Gandalf, that'd be okay.