'The Hobbit' Now Slated for December 2012

I hate to say I told you so, but it looks like The Hobbit will be pushed back to December 2012. It's been vacillating between December dates in 2011 and 2012 for a while, and The Hollywood Reporter says it's the more distant of the two. However, the trade also says there are no delays, but that's just not true, as we'll outline below. In the meantime, here's what you need to know: Both Hobbit films will hit IMAX, and that's actually how the release dates became public. The first movie is December 2012, with the follow-up arriving 12 months later. Oh, and it's tentatively being heralded as a 3-D film, at least in IMAX. But by that time, there will be so many damn digital screens that it will be hard to avoid making that move. So how do we know it's actually delayed? Well, for starters, the money's not there. And there won't be enough to make these movies until MGM is sold. That goes back several months, when the studio - which is co-producing with Warner Bros. - pleaded with its creditors to skip interest payments on $3.7 billion of debt so pre-production on The Hobbit could begin. At the time, that plan was approved, but soon after, the creditors started taking bids on MGM, and everything kind of stalled, including James Bond. On the creative side, Peter Jackson said the following in December:

"Nothing has changed as far as I am concerned. Somebody wrote something on the internet and a lot of nonsense happened. You don’t want to believe everything you read on the internet. We were due to deliver the scripts and be shooting sometime around April and now I think I said in an interview we were shooting in June. And somehow people are now saying the film is delayed." "As far as I am aware, they are not delayed at all. I am not even sure when we are going to start shooting…we are delivering the scripts just after Christmas; they’ll be finished and we’ll be shooting as soon as we possibly can. But you need a certain amount of time to finish the pre-production."

Take Jackson at his word back to June of last year and he told the New Zealand edition of Stuff that shooting was scheduled to begin in March, as in over a month ago, with an eye on December 2011. So how in the world is this not delayed, and why are they so afraid of doing what the Bond producers did? In essence, EON Productions said, "Hey, it's not us. We'd love to make this movie, but MGM's in deep trouble. So we have to wait." Seems easier than pushing the movie back further and further and acting like you never gave a timetable for its production or release. Having said that, 2012 is better, anyway, especially if they're going the 3-D route. Let the money sort itself out, get the cast you want, the schedule you want, and take your time to do it right.