At Comic-Con Peter Jackson mentioned that he has enough material from The Hobbit shoot and the additional reshoots he wants to do for THREE films based on The Lord of the Rings prequel (along with additional material from the appendix of the Lord of the Rings that filled out plenty of background information on the characters and events). Most didn’t take the suggestion seriously, assuming that additional scenes could be added to an “Extended Edition” Blu-ray like The Lord of the Rings.
However, The Hollywood Reporter is suggesting that Jackson is now seriously considering releasing three Hobbit films, not two. The idea is “to tell more of the story,” which would more-or-less cover everything in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books that relates to the pre-Fellowship of the Ring era.
Personally, as a huge Lord of the Rings fan (well, not big enough to dress up and speak Elvish, but you get the idea) I’m not sold on this yet. I’m not sure how The Hobbit could be stretched into three films and I would much rather two 3.5-hour films than six 2-hour, 20-minute films (for example). I know Jackson isn’t a filmmaker known for brevity (he hasn’t directed a film under two hours in over fifteen years) and I should probably trust his instinct as a filmmaker, but I’d hate to see a bloated Hobbit trilogy if the material really doesn’t call for it.
Production company New Line and financiers Warner Bros and MGM would certainly be happy with another film (except for having to pay the cast and crew for three films) since all three would likely be huge hits. But Warners has shown good judgement in the past few years — it didn’t release the first part of the last Harry Potter film in 3D because it wouldn’t be up to standards, and Warners also let Christopher Nolan wrap up his Dark Knight trilogy the way he wanted to with limited interference. I wonder what the studio’s stance on this decision is, since as much as a studio likes money it also doesn’t ever want to hurt a brand.
Regardless of the number of films, the first one, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, will be released this December.
Recent Comments