Tell me a story

So it looks like Peter Jackson is in talks with his producing partners and Warner Bros. to add a third film to The Hobbit franchise. He’s already turned the fairly short book into two films with the first film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, to be released December 2012 and the second film, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, to be released in December 2013. So it was a bit shocking to learn that he wants make yet a third film out of the book. But according to an interview Jackson did with Deadline.com, he acquired the rights to an additional 125 pages of notes that J. R. R. Tolkien wrote about The Hobbit and intended to include in The Hobbit in a future rewrite (a rewrite that never happened).

Jackson states:

We haven’t just adapted The Hobbit; we’ve adapted that book plus great chunks of his appendices and woven it all together. The movie explains where Gandalf goes; the book never does. We’ve explained it using Tolkien’s own notes. That helped inform the tone of the movie, because it allowed us to pull in material he wrote in The Lord of the Rings era and incorporate it with The Hobbit.

After the amazing The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I trust Peter Jackson with Middle Earth. It’s obvious he appreciates and identifies with the source material. Even if the decision to make a third movie is motivated in part by money, I don’t see him wanting to tarnish the reputation of his films or the source materials by making an inferior product. So if this third movie is greenlit, I’m all for it.

And it looks like we’ll know for sure fairly soon. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Talks are said to have accelerated in recent days, with the studio on board if the right financial arrangements can be achieved. That includes securing new actor deals for the expansive cast as well as shoring up certain rights associated with the property.”

No matter what happens, we’re still getting our two hobbit movies, and I cannot wait. After The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit has been my most anticipated movie of the year. Only five more months to go!

Sources: Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, Slashfilm