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Not all that glitters is gold

All Kinds of People Apparently Now in “Talks” to Make a Third The Hobbit

by Susana Polo | 2:03 pm, July 25th, 2012


We were just talking about this. And by this, I mean the modern movie trend of milking every blockbuster for two sequels regardless of whether or not the first installment in fact contained a complete story. (Some of you interpreted this as us saying that Peter Jackson invented the entire concept of the trilogy, when what we actually said, pretty clearly, was that his success with The Lord of the Rings caused Hollywood to realize that a trilogy was a package that audiences seemed to respond to, and therefore it begot a trend of booking single movies as trilogy beginnings before they even arrived in theaters, regardless of whether they were a story originally conceived as being told in three large parts.)

But I digress. Last weekend we brought you the rumor that Peter Jackson was in talks with his studio about the mountains of extra footage he’d like to shoot for The Hobbit. The question then was whether it would be making itself into the second film, or DVD extras, or what. Now, according to some pretty reliable sources, Jackson and Co. are in talks with producers and New Line to see if the money can be shuffled around and the deals made to stretch The Hobbit to three movies.

Allow me to borrow a meme from the Avengers fandom to express my reservations:

Jackson’s argument, presumably, is the one he made informally at Comic Con, which is that there’s a lot of material in the six appendices of The Lord of the Rings, packaged in the last pages of every copy of The Return of the King, that he’d like to bring to life. I’m going to assume that he’s only talking about two of those appendices, because the rest are made up of family trees, calendars, pronunciation guides, and linguistic notes. Any studio with two brain cells to rub together will get on board with this, provided actor contracts and rights can be acquired or renewed. It’s a license to print money.

But Peter. Remember the last time we just let you put everything you wanted into a movie? We got King Kong. And while every time somebody makes this point in a fan community they get shouted down by people who’d rather see “more” than “best” I’ll say it again: the “concise” has its place. And a very important place, too. Tell us the story of The Hobbit, peter. Then, tell us other stories. Make the third movie about whatever you want, Arwen and Aragorn, the Fall of Númenór, Dwarves in Moria, I don’t care. But please please, get Bilbo back to Bag End by the end of the second one.

I’ll make you a deal: you give me three The Hobbit movies that clock in at less than two hours each, and I’ll let you make them.

(via The Hollywood Reporter.)

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  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OD35QQZNBPZJXWTCBY7N4EE7VY Sarah

    “Remember the last time we just let you put everything you wanted into a movie? We got King Kong.”

    GET TO THE FUCKING MONKEY.

  • http://twitter.com/travelandtelly Donna

    I think that point is that he can’t make another movie about whatever else he wants because the Tolkien estate won’t release the rights. The Hobbit is the only other Tolkien property anyone has the rights to make into a movie. So if we want more Peter Jackson/Middle Earth movies, they have to be part of The Hobbit. 

  • http://twitter.com/Lyta1418 Jo Reis

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

  • Anonymous

    I enjoyed King Kong. Bring me more hobbits Jackson!

  • Anonymous
  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OD35QQZNBPZJXWTCBY7N4EE7VY Sarah

    Yay! Someone got my Tripod reference! :D

  • Anonymous

    I’m with you, Susana.  This smells too much of money-motivation than artistic-motivation.  I’m impressed enough that he’s turned the delightful but rather pint-sized book (especially compared to any of those in the LOTR trilogy) into 2 full-length films.  But three?  Really?

  • http://reshapingreality.wordpress.com/ Aidan Bird
  • http://twitter.com/filbypott William Staples

    Three movies is ridiculous. This is a movie that can be – and HAS been – told in only ONE movie.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/IQPGSK4DXK2RIBEDT2ADY7Z6FI Kevin

    HBO has ruined me for short movies. Seriously, compare the 10+ hours of the DVD-extended versions of LOTR to 60 hours of The Wire, or, hopefully, god knows how many hours of GoT. These HBO series are so good that any movie, even a trilogy, seems like a cute short story in comparison. In GoT they’re already talking about splitting the 3rd book into two seasons – a great idea IMHO.

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