J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is a great book, but it's my least favorite of them all. Primarily because it was written to be for children, essentially, which is why so much of it is kept in the background or overly simplified. For instance, Gandalf disappears for big chunks of the story, and his adventures at the time are chronicled elsewhere. In pulling together The Hobbit, Peter Jackson took from a number of different Tolkien stories to help flesh it out. But there's so much more that Tolkien wrote that Jackson can play around with, and no way to fit it all in to just two The Hobbit movies.
Does that mean we'll see a third film? A trilogy like every other franchise has been doing lately? Maybe, maybe not. Yesterday at the WB panel, Jackson seemed reluctant to say that there would be a third film. But at the press conference with reporters, he did talk about wanting to shoot additional scenes, taken from another of Tolkien's works...
Jackson: "It's very premature. I mean we have an incredible source material with the appendices because 'The Hobbit' is obviously a novel but we also have the rights to use this 125 pages of additional notes where Tolkien expanded the world of 'The Hobbit' published at the end of 'Return of the King' and we've used some of it so far and just in the last few weeks as we've been wrapping up the shooting and thinking about the shape of the story, Fran and I have been talking to the studio about other things we haven't been able to shoot and seeing if we persuade them to do a few more weeks of shooting, probably more than a few weeks actually, next year. And what form that would actually end up taking, well the discussions are pretty early. So there isn't really anything to report but there's other parts of the story that we'd like to tell that we haven't been able to tell yet.
"We've used more source material than 'The Hobbit.' For instance in 'The Hobbit' when Gandalf mysteriously disappears for chapters, it was never really explained where he's gone. Much later Tolkien filled in those details. In these appendices he did talk about what happened. And it was all together a lot darker and more serious than what is written in 'The Hobbit'. And also to be honest I want to make a series of movies that run together so if any crazy lunatic wants to watch them all in a row there will be a consistency to it, a consistency of tone.
"So I don't want to make a children's story to go into 'The Lord of the Rings' so we are providing a balance. I mean a lot of the comedy and the charm comes from the characters. You're dealing with Bilbo Baggins who is a bit more reluctant to go on an adventure than Frodo was and with Dwarves who have a personality and camaraderie all of their own, so there's a lot of humor but there are still some serious themes involved."
I like that he's aiming to keep The Hobbit a bit more mature like The Lord of the Rings was, and to be honest, the idea of seeing a third film is one I can get behind. This weekend has done a pretty good job of getting me more excited for The Hobbit than I have over the last few months, and likely when November rolls around I'll be in a full on froth about it. There's a part of me that thinks if he does shoot any additional footage, it may just end up on some super stuffed Blu-Ray set, and not necessarily amounting to another movie.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens on December 14th.
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