wikipedia
In April 2008 Guillermo del Toro was officially announced as director of The Hobbit in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series alongside executive producer Peter Jackson. Del Toro stated that "Contributing to the 'Lord of the Rings' legacy is an absolute dream come true." For the next four years, he and his wife and two daughters will be moving to New Zealand. As a consequence of his taking on The Hobbit, the projects he had been planning to take on in the next few years have been put on hold.

Awesomeness beyond awesomeness.







referencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_del_Toro [en.wikipedia.org]

This could be a good thing, it's hard to tell with Peter Jackson still involved as the executive producer, though. I hated how he took a character who had all of one line in the books and made her into some sort of central focus in the movies just because he wanted more female characters. I know he was talking about adding her into the Hobbit, as well, since he seems to have some obsession with Liv Tyler. The Hobbit is like Peter Jackson's nightmare, though. It has no female characters in it anywhere.

Hopefully Del Toro won't obsess over these things and just make a good movie without feeling the need to write in pointless characters and try to make them seem important.

I have to also admit I'm sick of cheap slow motion, ridiculously long sweeping establishing shots, and back lit characters.

I heard about this... I'm excited! It'll be interesting to see what del Toro does with it.

isukun
This could be a good thing, it's hard to tell with Peter Jackson still involved as the executive producer, though. I hated how he took a character who had all of one line in the books and made her into some sort of central focus in the movies just because he wanted more female characters. I know he was talking about adding her into the Hobbit, as well, since he seems to have some obsession with Liv Tyler. The Hobbit is like Peter Jackson's nightmare, though. It has no female characters in it anywhere.

Hopefully Del Toro won't obsess over these things and just make a good movie without feeling the need to write in pointless characters and try to make them seem important.

I have to also admit I'm sick of cheap slow motion, ridiculously long sweeping establishing shots, and back lit characters.

Yes oh yes Isukun! :)
I so agree.

The Hobbit was a great story, very distinct and a completely different feel to The Lord of the Rings. I hope they don't make it too childish though... The thing with The Hobbit was taet they're very serious (and funny) little adult people in a childish form, but not cutesy or anything. They take their adventure as seriously as any bunch of small children playing at adults... which they're not in the story, but that's probably the way he wrote it and why it appeals so much to kids.

It's great news, I think, that it's in the hands of Guillermo del Toro. More generally, this could be a much harder film to make work on screen. Gimli was just about convincing as a dwarf (although he spent most of the movie providing the comic relief!) but how do you put a dozen or so dwarfs on screen and still make it look cool?

Neither children nor real "little people" will give it the right feel and twelve people running around on their knees is just going to look ridiculous. There's a real danger this could end up looking like a more expensive version of Willow.

But then, I didn't believe they could make LotR, either. Let's hope I'm wrong on this one, too!

Course, it'll delay Hellboy 3: The Revenge Of Barry.

Ooo! Well I'm looking forward to it! =3

As long as it's filmed in NZ using Weta, it would be hard to do it wrong.

I will have some trepidation going to see it though, the book has a strong feel that might change a lot after watching it in film... but then LOTR was brilliantly accomplished.

The graphic novel of the Hobbit was brilliantly done and captured Tolkien's world very well too.

One thing...Smaug had better look like THE SHIT!!!!!

jalford
One thing...Smaug had better look like THE SHIT!!!!!

Well he'd better not look like that. LOL But I do agree with you; I hope they do a good job on Smaug. ...And I hope they bring back Andy Serkis for Gollum.

Sweet.

Faugh! NZ this, NZ that... I'm sure there are a lot of lovely places in the Baltics and Scandinavia that would suit even better.

Yeah... Smaug... I wonder how they'll conceptualise him... Ah, who am I kidding? They'll make him look exactly like the work of that bloody illustrator they based the entire look of Lord of the Rings movies on.

Still, you could do a lot worse than that I suppose. So while it's a disappointingly singular vision, it's not a bad one.:)

---
Oh, and I bet Smaug will be female. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just not how I pictured him/her.

ozoneocean
Oh, and I bet Smaug will be female. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just not how I pictured him/her.

isukun
I hated how he took a character who had all of one line in the books and made her into some sort of central focus in the movies just because he wanted more female characters. I know he was talking about adding her into the Hobbit, as well, since he seems to have some obsession with Liv Tyler. The Hobbit is like Peter Jackson's nightmare, though. It has no female characters in it anywhere.

And judging by predictions, Smaug will probably be female.

I guess this would be an inappropriate time to bring up they could always do a crossdressing hobbit movie. Where half the characters are women. We have smaller builds. Better for hobbitting.

Someone
As a consequence of his taking on The Hobbit, the projects he had been planning to take on in the next few years have been put on hold.

At this rate, it looks like At the Mountains of Madness is never going to be made.

Oh well. I hope the movie will be good, though the book had them visiting a lot of places. I doubt the movie will be able to include all their adventure spots without feeling schizophrenic.

What do you guys think will be cut?

mechanical_lullaby
Where half the characters are women. We have smaller builds. Better for hobbitting.

Dwarfing you mean ;)
Most of the characters are dwarves... There's only one hobbit if I remember rightly.
Some short, stocky women could look good in beards :)

I can't remember any major female characters in The Hobbit, but there is that little village on the lake as well as the forest home of the wood elves, there are people of both sexes there, minor or non characters as they are.

There probably were women in places like Lake Town or Rivendell, but there is no mention of them and none have any speaking roles.

Where half the characters are women. We have smaller builds. Better for hobbitting.

Wasn't that how they did the Lord of the Rings radio drama, where a good number of the hobbits were voiced by women, and noticeably so.

isukun
There probably were women in places like Lake Town or Rivendell, but there is no mention of them and none have any speaking roles.

Not a good memory for the book eh? :)
Not Rivendell: the wood elves are a different group... antagonists initially.

And there's mention enough of women in the lake town during the battle, but no speaking roles from my skim reading just now.

Man I've had that cpy of the Hobbit for years!

ozoneocean

isukun
This could be a good thing, it's hard to tell with Peter Jackson still involved as the executive producer, though. I hated how he took a character who had all of one line in the books and made her into some sort of central focus in the movies just because he wanted more female characters. I know he was talking about adding her into the Hobbit, as well, since he seems to have some obsession with Liv Tyler. The Hobbit is like Peter Jackson's nightmare, though. It has no female characters in it anywhere.

Hopefully Del Toro won't obsess over these things and just make a good movie without feeling the need to write in pointless characters and try to make them seem important.

I have to also admit I'm sick of cheap slow motion, ridiculously long sweeping establishing shots, and back lit characters.

Yes oh yes Isukun! :)
I so agree.

The Hobbit was a great story, very distinct and a completely different feel to The Lord of the Rings. I hope they don't make it too childish though... The thing with The Hobbit was taet they're very serious (and funny) little adult people in a childish form, but not cutesy or anything. They take their adventure as seriously as any bunch of small children playing at adults... which they're not in the story, but that's probably the way he wrote it and why it appeals so much to kids.

I agree with all this (imagine that!) :)

But yeah, I loved LOTR, but this movie definitely needs to be done differently.

Not Rivendell: the wood elves are a different group... antagonists initially.

I wasn't leafing through the book looking for exact quotes, but I was thinking more of Rivendell and not the Wood Elves, who come up later. The Dwarves get a little ribbing from the elves as they come into town in Rivendell, but I do not remember how they were described. With the Wood Elves, beyond the feast they see in the Mirkwood, they don't really interact with anyone apart from Thranduil and a few guards.

Now that I think about it, though, the spiders might have been female.

You guys know that it's gonna be 2 films right?

Bittenbymonk
You guys know that it's gonna be 2 films right?

Really? I wonder why... I suppose you can get more things stuffed into two though, so that might be cool. ^_^

ozoneocean

Bittenbymonk
You guys know that it's gonna be 2 films right?

Really? I wonder why... I suppose you can get more things stuffed into two though, so that might be cool. ^_^

Film number one will be "the Hobbit" while the second one will be a new story (or based on random Tolkien stuff) that will tie things up with the LOTR trilogy.

That sounds... not soooo good. :(

Weee-eeelll, at the end of the Hobbit, Gandalf does say something about him and his mates getting rid of "the Necromancer" or some such creature, who was actually Sauron.

So maybe they'll expand on that. That's the main narrative link Tolkien himself had in there.

Film 2 is also a good excuse to bring back an excessive amount of characters from the trilogy. I'm fully expecting them to shoe-horn in pretty much everyone.

Well if it has to do with that Necromancer or whatever his name was, then you could legitimately get in the "council of the wise" (if it was called that? "White council"?). Who would that include...? Elrond and all those guys... and girls, maybe even Aragorn. But not the rest of the hobbity elfy drawfy team.

I wouldn't mind Smaug being female, though it would feel a little weird for her to roll over and display her pretty one-piece to Bilbo, and then having Bilbo snicker at the fact that there's a big gap over the left breast area.

Being reptilian, Smaug won't have a breast per se... still, kinda awkward.

And yeah, the spiders can be female.