'The Hobbit' Still Not Locked In For 2011

Uh-oh. Looks like trouble in Middle Earth. Writing about what's going on with New Line these days, Variety subtly drops some major information about The Hobbit, and it's not good news for people waiting to see the Lord of the Rings prequel. The crux of the article is that New Line is trying to once again position itself in the tentpole business, which certainly hit its apex with LOTR, but Warner Bros.' Alan Horn "won’t predict when the first of the two Hobbit films will be out, but says the most probable scenario would be a release in the fourth quarter of 2012." There are a few things to throw into this conversation. For starters, this hinted delay from December 2011 was mentioned several weeks back, but Peter Jackson shot it down, saying the film was still on target for 2011. At that time, the delay had something to do with the sale of MGM, which hasn't been settled yet. Since MGM is half the equation for The Hobbit, that's a big deal. Still, Jackson's plan was to start in June and shoot for 14 months, releasing the first movie next December. When we heard that schedule maybe three weeks back, we called it dubious at best. Fourteen months for something like this - two effects-driven three-hour movies - just doesn't seem like enough time. That's especially the case if, you know, the movie's in no way ready to go yet. "Once the script for the second film is in - Jackson and his longtime collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens are working on it with [Guillermo] Del Toro - New Line will work up a budget for both films and start casting," asserts Variety. With no budget and no idea who will conrol the other half of the films, it seems really, really optimistic to think this will be ready in about 22 months. Subtract some time for all that stuff to work itself out, and I still don't know it gets done in time.

Comments

[J.Bradley]

DIGITAL production methods COULD speed up the production of "films" now. (I've stopped using that word, and say "movies" instead.) Still though, the financial situation with MGM HAS to be a major factor on it's release.