Peter Jackson To Possibly Make The Hobbit After All

Lord Of The Rings fans everywhere spent last week crying and cuddling their special limited edition seven-hour extended Return Of The King DVD boxsets extra hard, all because Peter Jackson had been ruled out of directing the Hobbit movies.

But it turns out that all this spoddy anguish may have been misplaced to begin with. Although Peter Jackson said that New Line didn't want him to direct two Lord Of The Rings prequelling Hobbit movies, he didn't say what would happen if any other studios wanted to make a Hobbit movie or two. And guess what? It's expected that New Line will lose the movie rights to The Hobbit next year, at which point MGM wants to snap them up and get Peter Jackson onboard to direct the Hobbit movie that the fans clearly want - a million-hour-long Hobbit spectacular starring Peter Jackson as all the characters from The Hobbit with CGI hand-drawn by Peter Jackson and sound effects all done by Peter Jackson's mouth like that bloke out of Police Academy used to do.

The saga of The Hobbit movie is considerably longer and more knotty than the book of The Hobbit - which is basically only about a midget who mooches across a mountain and then sees a man kill a dragon - could ever hope to be. After Lord Of The Rings made $3 billion around the world and won all kinds of Oscars, it was hoped that Peter Jackson would quickly knock out a movie based on The Hobbit so that people who can't read could be treated to an overlong, freakishly self-important movie about what happened to Gandalf before Lord Of The Rings.

But it didn't happen like that; first Peter Jackson wanted to make an overlong, freakishly self-important King Kong movie and then an overlong, freakishly self-important Halo movie and then an overlong, freakishly self-important movie about Napoleon riding a dragon and then an overlong, freakishly self-important - though far less racially dubious - Dambusters remake, meaning that a Hobbit movie would be years away at best. 

Since then, though, a couple of things have happened. First off, the Halo movie died a messy death and then a niggly little piece of legal action left New Line claiming it didn't want Peter Jackson to direct any Hobbit movies anyway. All looked lost - because nobody can direct superfluous 20-minute scenes of wizards trudging up snowy mountains like Peter Jackson can - but now it looks like Peter Jackson might be making a Hobbit movie after all. A German website features a quote by movie producer Saul Zaentz, who thinks that the film rights to The Hobbit will revert back to him from New Line next year, allowing him and long-time Hobbit hopefuls MGM to make a new Hobbit film directed by Peter Jackson:

"It will definitely be shot by Peter Jackson. The question is only when. He wants to shoot another movie first. Next year the rights to The Hobbit will fall back to my company. I suppose that Peter will wait because he knows that he will make the best deal with us. And he is fed up with the studios: to get his profit share on the rings trilogy he had to sue New Line. With us in contrast he knows that he will be paid fairly an artistically supported without reservation." (translation from TheOneRing.net)

Now the game is on! Although Saul Zaentz expects to get the Hobbit rights next year, he doesn't have them yet. Being the spiteful little turds we are, we'd recommend that New Line snaps into overdrive and greenlights a kneejerk Hobbit movie while it still has the rights, just to annoy Peter Jackson.

The New Line Hobbit wouldn't need a big-name director, famous stars, or even a script - and we've come up with a few budget-conscious changes in case this is something New Line wants to follow-up with. For instance, instead of a Hobbit travelling for miles to battle a giant jewel-encrusted dragon in a spectacular cave, we think that audiences would be just as happy watching some grainy camcorder footage of a crying child watching a man kick a puppy to death in a shed.

New Line, you have our number.

Read more:

Jackson Could Still Direct Hobbit - IGN