It’s official – Guillermo del Toro, the Bo Selecta Peter Jackson, is the director of the two upcoming Hobbit movies.

It’s been a long time coming, but finally New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios have announced that they’re packing Guillermo del Toro off to New Zealand for the next four years so he can concentrate on making The Hobbit and its sequel, The Hobbit 2: The Hobbit In Space.

It doesn’t take a genius to see why Guillermo del Toro was chosen to direct the Hobbit movies – his flair for visual invention as demonstrated in Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy will really bring a sense of panache to his task of filming a bunch of midgets walking across the side of a mountain for six and a half titting hours.

There’s no doubting that the Lord Of The Rings trilogy was a landmark piece of cinema that moved the artform of self-indulgent, needlessly-overlong, self-important wankery that gave you deep vein thrombosis in your face just by making you watch it on by years, if not decades.

So it was inevitable that JRR Tolkien’s other book, The Hobbit, would get turned into a movie as well. It would have happened sooner but Peter Jackson had a fight with the studio and then everyone made up except that Peter Jackson decided he wanted to devote his time to making painfully long movies about dragons or something instead, so a new director of The Hobbit had to be found.

Finding the right director was a hard task, because whoever was chosen to make The Hobbit had to a) stay true to JRR Tolkien’s original vision, b) pad the story out enough to turn it into two movies so that everyone could get twice as rich from it and c) move to New Zealand, The Prettiest Place To Die Of Utter Fucking Mind-Shredding Boredom On Earth.

And while the early favourite to direct The Hobbit was Guillermo del Toro of Pan’s Labyrinth fame, nothing was made official. Until now, as Reuters reports:

Del Toro, whose credits include “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Blade II,” will move to New Zealand for the next four years to work on both “Hobbit” films with executive producer Peter Jackson, who directed all three “The Lord of the Rings” movies, according to New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios… “We have long admired Guillermo’s work and cannot think of a more inspired filmmaker to take the journey back to Middle-earth,” Jackson and his producing partner, Fran Walsh, said in a statement.

So, with filming set to begin next year, it’s full steam ahead for Guillermo del Toro as he makes all sorts of difficult decisions about The Hobbit. Will Ian McKellan return as Gandalf? Who will play Bilbo Baggins? Will del Toro be tied to the visual style of the Lord Of The Rings movies or will he be allowed to make it his own? Will the movie have one ending or will he follow Lord Of The Rings and film 38 different endings and then make everyone sit through them all one after the other for three extra hours when all they want to do it go to the toilet?

In 2010 we’ll find out, by being thumped on the head with The Hobbit marketing campaigns for months before it even comes out until we feel like we’re terrible people if we don’t see it. Then we’ll find out alright.

Read more:

Mexico’s del Toro to direct “The Hobbit” – Reuters