Last week, we reported that director Peter Jackson was thinking of extending the new big-screen version of The Hobbit from two movies to three.
Well, it’s official. Jackson announced Monday that the new Lord of the Rings movies will be a trilogy with the third film hitting theaters in the summer of 2014.
“Upon recently viewing a cut of the first film, and a chunk of the second, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and I were very pleased with the way the story was coming together,” Jackson said in a statement. “We recognized that the richness of the story of The Hobbit, as well as some of the related material in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, gave rise to a simple question: Do we tell more of the tale? And the answer from our perspective as filmmakers and fans was an unreserved ‘yes.’
“We know the strength of our cast and of the characters they have brought to life,” the Oscar-winning director continued. “We know creatively how compelling and engaging the story can be, and — lastly, and most importantly — we know how much of the tale of Bilbo Baggins, the Dwarves of Erebor, the rise of the Necromancer, and the Battle of Dol Guldur would remain untold if we did not fully realize this complex and wonderful adventure. I’m delighted that New Line, MGM and Warner Bros. are equally enthusiastic about bringing fans this expansive tale across three films.”
They do realize how small the book is, right? I own a copy (a somewhat old one) and it’s probably my fourth smallest book, out of my entire collection of books, which is probably around twenty to thirty books (including graphic novels).
I feel like these films are going to have a lot of filler, as they will need to if they’re going to stretch it to three films. They’re also going to have to make bits up so they can have exciting endings, and they will probably have a lot of dramatic pauses like on anime. This could turn out to be a pretty bad trilogy, but this is all just an observation, and I could be completely wrong.
Whatever the case, I’m happy it’s being filmed in 48fps. It’s time to move forward, like we did with HD (although I still can’t see the differance).