The Hobbit films, previously to be directed by Guillermo del Toro and now to be directed by Peter Jackson again.

but they're not human, they're dwarfs, do you see???

wasn't the cartoon hobbit only 1 1/2 hours? i thought they captured everything necessary in that, and even padded it with songs. i totally don't get why this is gonna be 2 movies, and am a bit worried now!

Entirely my concern! Should be a nice lighthearted prologue to the overblown Lord of the Rings.

even the flimsiest novella can be adapted for the screen into two 3-hour movies -- the material is there, they may as well shoot as much of it as they want

But they are putting in loads of stuff that isn't in the book.

eh, i kinda disagree. i mean i'd be happy to be proved wrong by the movie itself - if it's 6 hours of film in 2 sittings and it all rocks, ok, great, i take it all back! but i feel like the hobbit's a fairly concise story, and filling it out into 2 long movies is kinda stretching it out more than is strictly necessary. i mean, are they really gonna put Gandalf's Adventures Somewhere Completely Different in the middle of the frikkin hobbit? frankly i'm worried.

the lord of the rings was overblown, but that's kinda it's charm. and yet how muchm of the books (not to mention filmed footage) did they have to excise to make it a compelling narrative? don't get me wrong, i'm not complaining, i thought the movies were great - enjoyed every minute. but they really couldn't have been a millisecond longer without starting to bore me.

the hobbit needs no new material - it's perfectly written to be transformed to a single feature length film. god, is this the studios pressuring (or even just encouraging/indulging) pj to make 2 movies instead of one, just to automagically double the ticket sales? ugh.

(xpost 1 up)

<already firing up final cut to make a "phantom edit" of bloated 6 hour hobbit epic fail>

They're going to have a whole bit about driving the Necromancer out of Mirkwood. Probably a big battle scene and everything

they didn't 'have to' excise anything from the books to make lotr compelling, but pj & clunkin scriptwriter team did so anyway because the story needed less wonder and more werewolve action sequences.

These will be worth watching, and regardless of above pic i can't believe they'll look anything less than amazing, but if the same hatchet job is done on the script and the acting is as wooden as in lotr, it'll be another almost-but-not-quite job. Tolkien deserves better than that.

I don't think they're doing two films cos of studio pressure, i think it's entirely down to the hubris of Peter Jackson

i would love to anticipate this, as i LOVED the hobbit as a kid. and loved it just as much when i reread it as an adult. never felt as passionate abt the LOTR books, which i know is heresy, but too much of a great thing is still just ... too much. still, the hobbit, man! fuck.

but good christ i hated the LOTR movies. hated their imagination-free visual style, pitiless length, sopping sentiment, bland characters and funcrushing reverence. half liked the first one in the theater, or tried to, but was utterly defeated by the next two. and fared no better in attempting to give them another chance on video. twice! such awful, awful things.

so how am i gonna anticipate a six-hour hobbat? did no one notice that the book is abt one-fifth the length of the LOTR series? not two fucking thirds...

wasnt one of the complaints about the LOTR movies that they sacrificed the leisurely pace of the books for action movie hijinks? maybe this will be a slow and pastoral journey through middle earth~

if you want to anticipate the Hobbit, imagine a hairy foot disappointing a human face — forever

wasnt one of the complaints about the LOTR movies that they sacrificed the leisurely pace of the books for action movie hijinks? maybe this will be a slow and pastoral journey through middle earth~

more that they dragged some sections, left others out and invented whole new ones in order to 'correct' what jackson saw as pacing difficulties, but yeah.

you might be on to something if we didn't already know that jackson is shooting an entire movie about things that weren't in the hobbit at all.

Some pics

http://imgur.com/a/BXXBA

Wonder why we didn't post the initial trailer...oh wait, ILX was down then.

well here it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0k3kHtyoqc

u know what would be cool is if they really take advantage of their short stature to shoot this in a really crazy wide aspect ratio like 4:1

Can't play it cool, I'm pretty excited about this. Martin Freeman looks like he'll be perfect.

Some of the dwarves don't look all that dwarfish though, more like samurai or something.

^yeah, it gets even a little more concerning than that...

Fili & Kili
http://www.flicksandbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/kili-fili-hobbit.jpg

Looks like PJ's intent on bringing individual character and backstory to each of the 238 or so identical dwarves in the book. No wonder we're in for six hours of movies. Wasn't it kind of a joke that there were loads of them and they were pretty much interchangeable in the book?

Still excited though.

this sounds weird

http://www.vulture.com/2012/04/will-new-hobbit-footage-change-3-d-forever.html

some footage about to be shown live streaming right now:

http://www.theonering.net/live/

wait so if it's at 48fps does that mean it looks like when you visit your parents and they're too old to notice that they've got that batshit setting on the tv that makes everything look like a wedding video? surely it doesn't look like that.

(although i'll tell you what's a trip: computer-animated movies with that setting on.)

Jeffrey Wells has seen the revolution at 48 fps:

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/04/48_frames_chang.php

I don't really understand why that would make it brighter or anything but the flickering is definitely a problem.

You're watching, it seems, high-def video footage that, in an earlier time, might have been shot simultaneously along with the traditionally captured, more cinematic version that would be shown in theatres...or so you would have told yourself as you watched it in 1998 or 2005 or whenever. Except this is now and the high-def, 48 fps footage we saw this morning is it -- this is how the movie will actually look.

Is this actually saying anything?

prob not, it's Jeff Wells

Hopefully they will charge 2x for tickets to cover the cost of all that additional movie we're being graced with.

i dont think anyone knows how many theaters are actually going to be able to project it at 48fps, but im guessing not very many

"In a manner of speaking I was creaming in my pants this morning."

Jeff Wells in a nutshell tbh

fucking dwarves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlB77vM2FMg

(That's the safe for work version. This isn't.)

see now that i can use

Giant scroll from the movie showing a bunch of scenes including dwarves in barrels and Gandalf kicking it with Beorn.

Wow, that's a lot more into the book than I would have thought the first movie would have gotten, about two-thirds. Guess they're really going to spend a lot of time in Lake-town/Lonely Mountain/Battle of Five Armies (which I'm good with).

Martin Freeman has looked so weird in all of the promotional pictures for this, it's like he's had some sort of digital plastic surgery.

I never did like the posters for the LOTR movies, I admit, so it's nice to see that tradition carried on here. Just gimme a new trailer!

Guess the spiders will be the climactic sequence.

Yeah, looks like they're arranging the division between the two movies for Maximum Cumberbatching, which is really your only winning strategy these days.

LOL at invisible Bilbo

http://geek-news.mtv.com/2012/07/10/exclusive-the-hobbit-figures/

Ice Ice Bilbo

Though now I wonder if they're going to do some bullshit thing where he's transparent in the movie or something (like the Rankin-Bass version), even though the LOTR movies went a full-on invisible route.

It's probably just another toy to sell. IIRC they sold invisible Frodo figures as well.

Makes sense.

Also, call me amused:

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2012/07/08/58398-benedict-cumberbatch-visits-the-zoo-for-inspiration/

Some Jacksony stuff from his FB:

Looking forward to giving fans a glimpse of the Hobbit, answer questions and share a few stories about our return to Middle-earth.

For those of you who won't be attending Comic Con, we have several things in the pipeline to share with you over the next few weeks. Our new video will be ready very soon - in fact our video blog crew has already left for Comic Con, and we'll be capturing a behind the scenes look at our experiences there. We're talking about possibly including a few clips from our Hobbit reel in the blog.

We are also working on our next trailer, which you should expect to see sometime in September.

Lastly, let me give you more detail about my decision to screen the Hobbit Reel at Comic Con in 2-D and 24 fps. My LA Times quotes are brief and the topic deserves a little more detail than that. We have conducted many private screenings of Hobbit footage in the US and several international territories, running the same reel twice - once at 24fps, and secondly at 48fps. This has allowed distributors and exhibitors direct comparison of the two formats. The response has been universally strong for the higher frame rate of 48fps.

When we screened only the 48fps reel at CinemaCon a few months ago, some bloggers focussed stories, not on the content, but on their negative reaction to 10 mins of high frame rate footage. This reaction convinced me that the only fair way to experience 48fps, is to sit down and watch a complete feature length movie, with a narrative, not quick trailer cuts. Do I want the ComicCon Hobbit stories to be all about 48 fps? Of course I don't. I want to present footage from a movie we're all proud of, with terrific performances and I'm looking forward to seeing what you think.

I've always been happy to bet on myself, and for me the experience of watching the full Hobbit movie in 3-D and 48 fps is something really special. Fully immersive, like stepping into Middle-earth. The screen disappears, and you enter the world of the movie in a vivid way. I love it.

The subject of high frame rates has serious film industry implications, and it's important that it's judged in the fairest possible context. I'm afraid that a presentation of a short clip reel in a huge convention center is simply not the way to do it. I'm sorry if people attending Comic Con were hoping to see a glimpse of 48 fps, but let me say that in December, if you choose to see the Hobbit in a great cinema, projecting the higher frame rate, you will be in the best place to make up your own mind. And you will have the choice - there will be plenty of cinemas screening both versions.

Here's my prediction: this time next year, there will be several movies shooting at 48 fps. As an industry, we have to push the current technology to provide more spectacular and immersive experience in the cinema, on a nice huge screen.

fuck you and your 48fps hire a fucking writer