oooh. Too bad. Well, whoever takes up the baton is going to have quite a challenge pleasing the huge cadre of Jackson/Ring fans (not to mention Tolkien fans, naturally). Should be interesting.

I suggest they adapt the first half of the book for theatrical release, then when that fails, wait several years before permitting another group of less-skilled animators to adapt the final third.

Oooh, tough news, but now I can image: The Hobbit, directed by Christopher Nolan, or The Hobbit, adapted for the screen and directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp as a delightfully re-imagined Gandalf.

I can go on. Which directors will make you laugh when you read that their name is attached?

I had read just a couple days ago that The Hobbit was in the works with Jackson directing and now this. Playing with my emotions is bad form!

Part of me is glad to hear this.

The LotR films were gorgeous and very entertaining, but any fan of Tolkien's world found a lot of flaws in the movies, myself included (and I don't qualify as a "serious" fan at all), and PJ seemed interested in making even more vast changes to The Hobbit.

Fellowship had a lot missing such as the Bombadil stuff, the barrow downs... actually a good portion of the stuff with the Hobbits prior to them meeting Aragorn was missing. But missing is not as bad as including but totally altering things for no good reason.

The unforgivable sin of the first flick was removing Glorfindel just to give Liv Tyler more screen time. An elf that was present and killed a balrog at the Fall of Gondolin was a far more interesting character than the Arwen that PJ gave us. Not to mention the fact that Liv Tyler is not even remotely beautiful. Pathetic choice for Arwen to begin with.

Guess we are lucky Steven Tyler wasn't cast as Tom Bombadil. The Two Towers was entertaining as well, but it barely resembled the book at all. Saruman's "possession" of Theoden, the warg attack, the elves at the greatly exaggerated battle of Helm's Deep, the far TOO treelike Ents were made almost totally uninteresting by the missing dialogue and changes to how and why they go to war... etc.

No guarantee that whomever gets the job will not do the same thing, but I HOPE it is someone that has some respect for the book, which I do not think PJ has.

weretable: I think Peter Jackson intentionally made those changes to refocus the movie away from the hobbits (the story Tolkien seemed to be most interested in - 4 small peaceful folk forced by circumstances to do great things) and towards the reawakening of the King of Gondor, which many have been a more interesting story, cinematographically (I made this word up).

I was fine with most of the changes in the trilogy (except Liv Tyler, really), but I've been a little anxious about how PJ would "refocus" the Hobbit. However, I don't really want to see a traditional studio take on it, either (like The Chronicles of Narnia).