Yahoo Movies reports:
Hollywood director Guillermo del Toro said Monday that production delays have forced him to quit the planned film version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” a two-part prequel to New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson’s blockbuster trilogy “Lord of the Rings.”
“In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming The Hobbit, I am faced with the hardest decision of my life,” del Toro told a “Lord of the Rings” fan website.
“After nearly two years of living, breathing and designing a world as rich as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, I must, with great regret, take leave from helming these wonderful pictures,” he said, noting the film still hadn’t been given the green light by MGM, the struggling Hollywood studio…
(Peter) Jackson told http://www.TheOneRing.net: “We feel very sad to see Guillermo leave The Hobbit, but he has kept us fully in the loop and we understand how the protracted development time on these two films, due to reasons beyond anyone’s control, has compromised his commitment to other long term projects.
“The bottom line is that Guillermo just didn’t feel he could commit six years to living in New Zealand, exclusively making these films, when his original commitment was for three years. Guillermo is one of the most remarkable creative spirits I’ve ever encountered and it has been a complete joy working with him.”
He would discuss options for a new director with MGM this week, Jackson told the website.
I’m hoping that Jackson himself who did such a great job with the Lord of the Rings movies will step in and direct the movies himself. That would be best.
And in the meantime we always have that drug induced and weird “The Hobbit” made in the 70’s. I’m hoping Jackson makes “The Hobbit” just so I can get the nightmares over with from that debacle of a cartoon no child should’ve been forced to watch.
June 1, 2010 at 1:47 pm
That's too bad. I think del Toro was a good choice, but it looks like he bowed out with grace and it was accepted with grace – 2ce as long as expected is not really fair to ask, even if it would have been awesome.
I heard book reports about The Hobbit and wasn't much impressed, and then in 8th grade we watched some horrible animated one and I basically decided I wasn't interested in anything at all by Tolkien…. A few years down the line, we all went to see The Fellowship of the Ring, and I fell in love with the books and became a huge Tolkien fan. Even my blog is Tolkien-inspired in theme and title. And I just finished reading The Hobbit last week, and absolutely loved it. Just goes to show, sometimes films can do huge disservices to books, and sometimes they can do huge favors for them.
June 1, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Hey, wasn't that the version where the soundtrack was sung by Glenn Yarbrough? And you associate drug use with that? Please elaborate.
June 1, 2010 at 1:57 pm
I liked that cartoon. It inspired me to read the books.
June 1, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Frodo…of the nine fingers….and the ring of doom……
For some reason the "Hobbit" and "The Last Unicorn" cartoons run together in my head…..
June 1, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Awwww, I liked the cartoon version!
June 1, 2010 at 3:24 pm
The Hobbit captivated me while a junior in college. The LOTR has held my interest for almost 30 years. Together these works by Tolkien constitute some of the best work in English literature. Reduced to film, the result is less satisfying. I have and enjoy viewing The Hobbit, but not to the degree that I enjoy reading it. I have and enjoy viewing the LOTR, but again not to the degree that I enjoy reading it. Hopefully this new effort will be as well done as the LOTR series. Mr. Toro is not irreplaceable.
June 1, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Deirdre, both of those hand drawn cartoons were made by Rankin-Bass, who were more successful at making puppet-animated Christmas specials.
June 1, 2010 at 5:01 pm
I'm fine with PJ directing it, but please get someone who understands the story to adapt the screenplay. The LOTR movies are beautiful but they miss the whole second half of the story and almost all of Aragorn's story.
/geek-rant
June 1, 2010 at 6:22 pm
@Baron: I could hug you for that rant! I drive my friends crazy because I'm the only one who read the books and they all love the movies.
June 1, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Weird, it erased half my comment…:( Anyways, they love the movies and it drives them crazy that I think they left major bits out.
June 1, 2010 at 6:33 pm
I didn't think much of the film version of LOTR!
The treatment of Aragorn was just too Hollywood!
They make him look like a lovesick teenager! Instead of sending the elf-Lord Glorfindel to rescue Frodo after he is stabbed by the Ringwraith king, they send Arwen! Not something a father is likely to do! And it was done so they could show a love scene in the woods. YOu would never understand from this that Aragorn and Arwen have been waiting, mostly separated, for something like 60 years since they first fell in love. Arwen as you remember is an immortal until she choses mortality to be with Aragorn, and Aragorn has a life span thrice that of other men. You just don't see the maturity and self abnegation of the man.
Another thing which I found particularly offensive about the movies is the invented rupture between Frodo and Sam over Gollum, as they are about to enter the lair of Shelob. Sam clearly disapproved of his master's treatment of Gollum, but he would never have separated from him over it, nor would Frodo have dismissed him. A rupture between them, even a temporary one, is completely foreign to the nature of their relationship in the books.
And then, to leave out the Scouring of the Shire! One of my favorite parts!
Susan Peterson
June 1, 2010 at 6:45 pm
And of course, they edit out (even in the un-edited versions) the entire Hobbitshire that the four Hobbits return home to. Utter chaos and destruction and evil in the Shire that the heroes must then battle and conquer. I agree, there was so much richness in the book that they didn't add to the movie for fear it would "be too long"…
Although, I must say that if it weren't for the movies, people wouldn't have grown in mass numbers to love Tolkien and appreciate his writings.
Now if only they'd continue on with the Chronicles of Narnia as well!!!
June 1, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Personally, I'm hoping to someday see a few intelligent treatments of some of the stories from the First Age.
And yes, while a more full treatment of the LOTR would have been nice (including Robin Williams as Tom Bombadil) I think screen adaptations of Tolkien's work would benefit from taking a shorter work and adapting it for film, rather than to cram hundreds of pages into three films.
The Hobbit doesn't interest me greatly. But the stories of Luthien and Beren, of Turin, and of Earendil and Elwing would. That would be a trilogy worth watching.
June 1, 2010 at 6:57 pm
I would disagree. Mostly liked what Jackson did with LOTR, but the Hobbit is a totally different story requiring a much lighter hand. Plus Jackson has bombed with everything he has done since LOTR pretty much.
I totally agree with what Christian film critic Jeffrey Overstreet has to say about this. http://lookingcloser.org/2010/05/the-hobbit-needs-a-director-and-a-star/
June 2, 2010 at 4:24 am
My kids grew up singing songs from the cartoon Hobbit (Grandma had it at her house). I finally watched it myself, and have to say it is more my speed than the action flicks.
June 2, 2010 at 3:06 pm
I disagreed with a number of the choices made by Jackson in filming LOTR, but leaving out "The Scouring of the Shire" was not one of them.
In the book…it's an important chapter, speaking to a theme that Tolkien thought very important. And it works. On the screen, however, it would have been highly anticlimactic. As it was, his Return of the King dragged on for a good 30-40 minutes after the destruction of the Ring – and do not get me wrong, Tolkien fan that I am, I did not begrudge those 30-40 minutes, but it pushed a lot of casual viewers and critics to the edge. With film, you fiddle with tightness of narrative arc (especially when you're already over the 3 hour mark as it is) at your peril. The reality is that what works on the printed page does not always work, dramatically, on the screen. Dragging out an already epic-length ROTK for a full hour or more after Mount Doom would have made for a problematic and anticlimactic movie.
That said – I would love to have seen a version of it on an extended DVD, even as just an outtake. But Jackson never filmed it.
I'm disappointed to see del Toro bail out of this, but it sounds like this production has far bigger problems now. If Jackson decides to helm it himself he may be better ditching the second film and just do the Hobbit straight up – MGM might be more likely to greenlight it.
P.S. I think it is unfair to say Jackson has "bombed" with everything since LOTR – he's done only one major and one minor film, and KING KONG, at any rate, did quite well at the box office. As did DISTRICT 9, which he produced.
June 2, 2010 at 5:13 pm
The animated Hobbit and ROTK are so horrible that they are humerous. "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way…"
Dave
June 2, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Saw "The Hobbit" in the '70s. Rankin-Bass were good story-tellers. Made me want to read the book. I agree that their ROTK left much to be desired, but they did that after Ralph Bakshi did the 1st half and didn't the 2nd. In my opinion, Bakshi is a good animator, but a terrible story teller – he took away my interest in reading Lord of the Rings for years. "Where there's a wip…" may be the worst sing ever, "The Greatest Adventure" still plays in my head with fondness, along with the haunting tune of one of the songs by the dwarves.