The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

After years of speculation and with a long-running legal tussle over royalties interfering with it New Line has finally announced that the much-anticipated film version of The Hobbit will now be greenlit. That’s the good news. The bad news is Kiwi director Peter Jackson who so successfully brought Tolkien’s later Lord of the Rings books to cinematic life will not be at the helm. Jackson had seemed the obvious choice to both Hollywood and to fans alike, but a legal row between him and New Line over royalties contributed to delaying any movement on the Hobbit; now the director has a pretty full slate, not least with his collaboration with Steven Spielberg on the Tintin movies.

Ah but there is good news to balance this – the director who has been installed in place of Jackson is none other than Guillermo Del Toro, director of the two Hellboy movies, Blade II and the visually ravishing (and BAFTA and Oscar winning) dark fairy tale of Pan’s Labyrinth. I have to say that I’m fairly happy with this choice – obviously Peter Jackson would have been ideal, but I’ve been a fan of Guillermo’s since the early 90s and his early Ron Perlman-starring Cronos, a clever and inventive re-working of the vampire myth while the Mexican director’s Spanish language horrors like The Devil’s Backbone are eerily atmospheric.

“[Del Toro is] a cinematic magician who has never lost his childlike sense of wonder. We have long admired Guillermo’s work and cannot think of a more inspired film-maker to take the journey back to Middle Earth,” Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh.

(Guillermo Del Toro and Doug Jones – who also plays Abe Sapien in the Hellboy movies – as the Faun on the set of Pan’s Labyrinth)

The film and a proposed sequel (presumably drawing on some of the many volumes and appendices of Middle Earth history Tolkien created) will be produced by Jackson and shoot back to back in New Zealand, with a proposed release date of 2010 for The Hobbit and the following year for the sequel. No cast members have yet been announced, although Sir Ian McKellen is on record as saying he would be more than interested in reprising his role as Gandalf. (source: the BBC)