When it comes to uncomfortably lengthy movies about poxy little elf-things that have a thousand different endings all piled up one after another, the Lord Of The Rings trilogy is where it's at – just don't expect the Hobbit film to be very similar.
The man credited with turning a guffy set of fantasy books like Lord Of The Rings into a guffy set of overlong films like the Lord Of The Rings trilogy that somehow a) people wanted to watch and b) won a load of Oscars is Peter Jackson, and it was widely thought that Peter Jackson was also going to be the man who turned the guffy Lord Of The Rings kiddie-book precursor The Hobbit into a movie too, but Jackson has revealed that a dispute between him and New Line means that he's effectively been kicked off The Hobbit movie. That's bad news for people who wanted all the Tolkien movies to have a singular autered feel to them, but it's good news for people who didn't really fancy watching a midget walking across a mountain for five hours very much.
Peter Jackson has seen some ups and downs in the last few years. On the one hand, his adaptations of the Lord Of The Rings movies have so far made about $3 billion, but on the other hand, hardly anyone wanted to see his three-hour, $207 million remake of King Kong. And just a few weeks ago Peter Jackson had more movie projects on the go than he knew what to do with – he was executive producing a remake of Dambusters and executive producing the long-awaited Halo movie, while he had his director hat on for a movie about some dragony nonsense plus he was be wooed by MGM who wanted him to helm a movie based on The Hobbit. But times change fast in Hollywood – now the Halo movie looks set to never get made and Peter Jackson has been kicked off The Hobbit, too.
Peter Jackson was widely regarded to be the only sensible choice to direct The Hobbit; he'd been so immersed in Tolkien culture during the making of Lord Of The Rings that he probably thinks entirely in Elvish by now. But thanks to a letter that Peter Jackson wrote to TheOneRing.net, we now know that a payment dispute between Peter Jackson and New Line means that he won't be directing The Hobbit after all. Jackson wrote:
You may also be aware that Wingnut Films has bought a lawsuit against New Line, which resulted from an audit we undertook on part of the income of The Fellowship of the Ring… We assumed that our lawsuit with the studio would come to a natural conclusion and we would then be free to discuss our ideas with the studio, get excited and jump on board. We've assumed that we would possibly get started on development and design next year, whilst filming The Lovely Bones… However last week, Mark Ordesky called Ken and told him that New Line would no longer be requiring our services on the Hobbit and the LOTR 'prequel'. This was a courtesy call to let us know that the studio was now actively looking to hire another filmmaker for both projects.
But the story doesn't end there – it's New Line that has blocked Peter Jackson from directing the Hobbit movie, while it was MGM that was touting the Hobbit movie around to Peter Jackson in the first place. What does this mean? Will MGM and New Line release competing Hobbit movies? Let's hope so – if there's anything better than watching a little hairy-toed man traipse across a mountain for three hours so that he can see someone else kill a dragon, it's watching a little hairy-toed man traipse across a mountain for three hours so that he can see someone else kill a dragon twice. Right?
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