I'm salivating. And I love that pic you use in the post.

I do not like the sound of that. Del Toro previously said that The Hobbit would not be a Jackson-film. But how can it not be if he and Fran Walsh writes it?

The script for The Lord of the Rings wasn't terribly good and he and his penpals weren't exactly on the money with King Kong (rather they messed up a good, simple story that is hard to mess up).

A different director and writer was in fact the greatest hope for The Hobbit.

Next step from Peter Jackson is likely to be "Ummm, I think I'll direct it myself after all, and you know what, I'll make it seven hours long."

I hope they have the guts to turn this thing into a musical!

Ralph Bashki rules!

The Hobbit is actually quite an extensive story, especially the third act which goes on for quite a bit. The difference is that the Hobbit is quite compact in its laguage while the Lord of the Rings has a lot of mood-setting devices and descriptions of natural scenery which can be disregarded for a screenplay.

Still, I would have preferred a really good screenwriter, like Monahan, to do the script. I really admire his work and Kingdom of Heaven showed that he can do a pretty elaborate sword drama without getting even remotely ridiculous or boring for even half a second.

I am not psyched about this either. Personally, I found the LOTR script disapponting. The true magic was lost. And it had a lot of little logical problems. Speaking of magic- Jackson said on the bonus material of FOTR, that magic was not awfully important to him- "I don't really like magic in movies", he said. So, I don't expect much out of "the Hobbit". Middle Earth without magic- how dull. They'll bend the book enough so that the true magic will be lost again.

If they don't cast Warwick Davis as Bilbo Baggins and discontinue their weird perspective tricks from LOTR (where they had conventional sized actors as hobbits- totally unbelievable), I might not watch the movie at all.

My hope is those movies will be redone some future day.

I think they will.

Jackson showed that it was feasible to turn the trilogy into feature films of reasonable length, which no-one believed. But they weren't terribly good. Three Christmases in a row I went to see an instalment and I was disappointed each time.

As technology gets better and cheaper I am sure someone will try to surpass Jackson's trilogy one day.

As for the Hobbit, I will watch it of course but I will probably feel disappointed again.

As for Jackson's skepticism of supernatutal things, one onders how he could bring himself to do Frighteners?

okay it says sequel wouldnt that be lord of the rings? and i highly doubt they could make the Silmarillion even 1/4 as good as it should be

maybe your looking into things a bit too much, lotr is a great watch, im sure the hobbit will be too.
just have fun and stop picking it apart.

Del toro will make this golden! there will be magic cause Del toro loves magic. And I think its great that jackson wont be tied up directing. I mean we all know that he'll be just as involved as he was in LOTR, the diff now is that he can focus on all the teams and all the aspects involved not just directing.

Plus there were 3 units shooting in LOTR and he couldn't direct all those by himself. Fran directed some and he had 2 other directors with thier own units.

I dont get the fuss with del toro. hes aamazing and he'll make the hobbit perfect!!

I just hope Del Toro can get out of making exactly the same looking characters - Anyone noticed how Hellboy II and Pan's Labyrinth characters are near identical. He's got imagination he just can't get away from the same images! Come up with something new and impress me.