The Hobbit
When New Line and Peter Jackson originally settled their financial issues and proceeded to agree to turn The Hobbit into a film, it also included a second film that would bridge that story to The Lord of the Rings. Speaking with Empire, director Guillermo del Toro has revealed that the plan has changed to give two films to adapt The Hobbit. Presumably the bridging film is now out of the picture, but who knows what the pursuit of money will one day enable.
“We’ve decided to have The Hobbit span the two movies, including the White Council and the comings and goings of Gandalf to Dol Guldur,” says Del Toro.
“We decided it would be a mistake to try to cram everything into one movie,” adds Jackson. “The essential brief was to do The Hobbit, and it allows us to make The Hobbit in a little more style, if you like, of the [LOTR] trilogy.”
I presume the “style” Jackson is refering to is its length.
Can’t say I see any reason why The Hobbit can’t be one long epic movie. Now we’re going to get stuck with two films that each have shoe-horned pseudo-three act structures so they don’t absolutely fail as solitary films. *sigh* On top of that, it sounds like they’re going to ruin the thing by removing Bilbo Baggins as the sole point of view of everything by following Gandalf on his side adventures. I don’t want to see glimpses into the greater story! Part of The Hobbit‘s brilliance is that we’re seeing this wild world unfold from Bilbo’s tiny perspective. Ugh. Adaptations should change for the medium, but you generally want to stick the gist of the original’s spirit, but now they’re turning The Hobbit from Bilbo’s story to Bilbo and Gandalf’s wild LOTR prequel. Yuck.
