Not long ago, Peter Jackson mentioned at Comic-Con that he wanted to film more footage for his upcoming adaptation of The Hobbit. However, what was unclear was if this would be footage that would be incorporated into the existing two films for extended editions or if it would become another film entirely.
Today, /Film is reporting that the latter may be close to coming true as apparently “talks have accelerated in recent days, with the studio on board if the right financial arrangements can be achieved.”
So what would this mean for the cast and crew? Well, several arrangements would have to be made, including figuring out who would have to come back for more shooting and when, as well as how much it would cost to do so. If everything were to work out, the additional filming would take place sometime in the summer of 2013 in New Zealand for about two months.
At this point, many of you are probably wondering how in the world Jackson would stretch out J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic into three films (there are more than likely people still trying to figure out how two films will work), but luckily he has explained how he plans to do it:
…we haven’t just adapted The Hobbit; we’ve adapted that book plus great chunks of his appendices and woven it all together. The movie explains where Gandalf goes; the book never does. We’ve explained it using Tolkien’s own notes. That helped inform the tone of the movie, because it allowed us to pull in material he wrote in The Lord of the Rings era and incorporate it with The Hobbit. So we kept the charm and the whimsy of the fairy tale quality through the characters. Through the dwarves and Bilbo, who is more of a humorous character. He doesn’t try to be funny but we find him funny and find his predicament more amusing than that of Frodo in The Lord of the Rings. That was more serious. So the whimsy is there, but tonally I wanted to make it as similar to The Lord of the Rings, because I wanted it to be possible for the people, the crazy people in the world who want to watch these films back to back one day…
It’s true that there’s a lot of additional material to be found in the appendices, so there is a good chance that this could work. Whether we do end up getting the third film or not, the timetable for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (due out December 14, 2012) and The Hobbit: There and Back Again (due out December 13, 2013) will not change.
As Jackson is the man who gave us his brilliant adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, I fully trust him to make whatever choice he feels is right regarding this material, and if that includes a third film that will enable him to tell more of the story, then I’m all for it.
Either way, you can expect official word on the final decision to be announced soon.
Do you guys want to see a third Hobbit film, or do you think Jackson’s pushing it? Let us know in the comments!