Peter Jackson to direct Hobbit movies after all

: 27 June 2010; John Howell

dragon_hobbit We recently reported that director Guillermo Del Toro had walked away from the two upcoming Hobbit movies, and even more recently discovered that District 9 director Neill Blomkamp might be a candidate to take them over (a rumour quickly quashed). Now it appears that executive producer and writer Peter Jackson, director of the insanely successful The Lord of the Rings trilogy, will be directing the two Hobbit movies instead.

According to Variety, Jackson is busy taking himself out of other projects he has been booked into. At the same time, he is trying to persuade the financially crippled MGM to provide him with some money to make these projects a reality. The Hobbit movies have been in a holding pattern for some time now.

On the day it was revealed that Guillermo Del Toro had walked away from the films, Jackson told the Dominion Post that he hadn't completely ruled out directing The Hobbit.

"If that's what I have to do to protect Warner Bros.' investment," he said, "then obviously that's one angle which I'll explore".

At the same time, Jackson also revealed that he wasn't anticipating any delay or disruption to pre-production work on The Hobbit and indicated the films were on schedule for releases in December 2012 and December 2013. Jackson is a producer with Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy on The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, due out at the end of next year, and was expected to direct the Tintin sequel. Perhaps this will be one of the projects he will be stepping away from to sit in the director's chair for The Hobbit.

So is this good or bad news? I was never a fan of Guillermo Del Toro taking on the job, not after I watched Hellboy II, but thought that Jackson's influence would keep him in check. If this comes to pass (which seems very likely) I think it's an extremely positive development. There's no director more qualified.

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