Attention Tolkien fans: There might be a third Hobbit movie (maybe)

Don't get too excited yet, but Peter Jackson is talking about possibly turning the two Hobbit movies he just completed filming -- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again -- into a trilogy. Why? Because 1. Warner Bros. has the rights to the additional notes from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, which has all this groovy stuff in it that relates to The Hobbit, and 2. Jackson has all this extra footage lying around, just waiting to be seen. He spoke with Collider, warning that all of this is only in the earliest of stages:

Well, it’s very, very premature. We have got incredible source material with the appendices. There’s the novel, but then we also have the rights to use the 125 pages of additional notes where Tolkien expanded the world of The Hobbit. We’ve used some of that so far, and just in the last few weeks, as we’ve been wrapping up the shooting and thinking about the shape of the story, Philippa [Boyens], Fran [Walsh] and I have been talking to the studio about other things that we haven’t been able to shoot and seeing if we could possibly persuade them to do a few more weeks of shooting. We’d probably need more than a few weeks, actually, next year. The discussions are pretty early, so there isn’t anything to report, but there are other parts of the story that we’d like to tell, that we haven’t had the chance to tell yet. We’re just trying to have those conversations with the studio, at the moment.

I have a question: How hard would it be, really, for Peter Jackson -- a person who is Peter Jackson -- to "persuade" Warner Bros. that he can give the studio yet another epic Tolkien trilogy? Because that other one did fairly well, doncha know... (via Geek Tyrant)

When she isn't nerding out that the holidays are coming, Jamie is a reader at Monday Night Fan Fiction at Fontana's in Chinatown, NYC (next date: TBA, 7:00 PM). All work is original, written by the readers, so if you have a brilliant fanfic idea stuck in your head, send it via Twitter: @jamielikesthis

MORE: Lord of the Rings • Peter Jackson • San Diego Comic Con • The Hobbit • Warner Bros

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Larry Ching

I predict that if the third movie gets made out of scraps of footage stitched together with additional mythos scenes – if there are no hobbits in the 3rd movie in major roles, it will bomb. That is, relative to LOTR or the main two Hobbit movies. It will probably recoup its expenses plus a little profit.
http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

“The Baggins Identity: after being ‘activated’ by rogue wizard Gandalf the Gray for a single mission, sleeper agent Bilbo Baggins returns to a life of placid normality in Hobbiton. Or does he? Armed with an elvish blade, mithril armor and ring of invisibility, Bilbo soon becomes one of the White Council’s most effective agents, specializing in espionage, ‘wetwork’ and hard-to-pull-off assassinations. Leaving nothing behind him but a trail of bodies, mysteriously stabbed in the kneecaps, Bilbo throws the forces of the Necromancer into confusion. But there are things that his new masters aren’t telling him …”
- http://twitter.com/chriscoreline chris coreline
  
  i would actually pay all the money to see this made.
  - Mitchell Glaser
    
    And I would pay to see it not made. This is a full dose of Trashing the Classics for Money. Jackson has been rewarded handsomely for his efforts already, we don’t need to pass the hat. He admits that it would be made up of leftovers from his work and Tolkien’s with the addition of some meat glue. You want to put that in your mouth?
DoctorDJ

After ruining “The Return of the King” with hours of black-blooded orc gore in the overly-long battle scenes, stressing a ridiculous “Mouth of Sauron” creature that is promptly decapitated, and the inability/unwillingness to show the “Scouring of the Shire”, (which is arguably the whole point of the odyssey), I’m foregoing Peter Jackson’s “Hobbit.”
Anyone willing to stretch Tolkien’s simple little book into a 3-movie extravaganza is fleecing the movie-going public.
- Timothy Krause
  
  What’s interesting about that, though, is that the lengthening of the films is to include contextual material for The Hobbit that would situate the action as part of the ongoing preparation for war against Sauron. So, having withheld the closure of LoTR the book from the films (the Scouring of the Shire, which is indeed the point of the whole saga, with the hobbits’ armed heroics underscoring this point), Jackson would give us prequel-y closure a la George Lucas with the new film. No doubt we’ll have a final shot of Gandalf looking all stony wise and worried-like, as he glances over to Strider winking from a hedgerow, with little baby Frodo gamboling nearby a babbling brook (with O what a look of concentration and even, perhaps, melancholy, as of some shadow stealing o’er his soul, O!) or some such shit. I blame that hunky Ewen McObiWan stroking his beard on Tatooine at the end of, ahem, Episode III.
  
  For me the real issue with TRotK was that interminable climb up Mount Doom and the histrionics throughout. But the hobbits all jumping on the magic hospital bed at the end (and the audience’s gales of laughter and WTFs) absolved all.
  - ocker3
    
    That scene almost made me walk out. Stylistically it was jarring and out of place, it wrenched me out of the good feeling I had and just spoiled a long and epic movie (that was almost a quest in itself to watch).
- dculberson
  
  “stressing a ridiculous “Mouth of Sauron” creature that is promptly decapitate”
  
  I liked the part where you claimed the “Mouth of Sauron” was “stressed” in the movie when it wasn’t even in the theatrical release.
  - DreamboatSkanky
    
    Which totally stressed the Mouth of Sauron, who’d thought he’d finally gotten his break in the talkies.
  - ocker3
    
    I think he means the very powerful Witch King who very quickly met his match because he never considered running into a woman on the battlefield
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Or a hobbit.
    - Shane Simmons
      
      Not sure if serious…forging on as if you are…
      
      The Mouth of Sauron is a character which meets Aragorn, Gandalf, etc. at the Black Gate, in the extended edition.
      The scene you describe is in the book.
      - ocker3
        
        *hangs head in geek shame*
- Shane Simmons
  
  Of all the changes made, leaving out the Scouring is what bothers you the most? I’m not sure it’s the whole point of the odyssey, but whatever. The way they rewrote it was anticlimactic, but one that had to ring true for American war veterans: being through a hellacious, life-changing time of your life, only to go home and find that though you’ve changed, life back home–and attitudes–haven’t.
  
  For the sake of disclosure, I love both the books, and PJ’s take on the story.
TheKaz1969

Man, I am just learning now that it will be TWO movies.. I’ll stick to my Orson Bean animated Hobbit movie for now…
franko

there’s more than enough in the appendices to make a third movie that bridges the hobbit and FOTR. i say bring it.
CSBD

I will be ok with it as long as he doesnt take a bunch of old Nazi footage, draw over top of it and add horns to the helmets.
- Mark Dye
  
  They killed Fritz!!
GuyInMilwaukee

Better than having them film the entire Silmarillion.

The third movie should be hobbit porn and called The Knob-bit.
- jetfx
  
  They were called Throbbits in the porn parody, Lord of the G-Strings.
http://twitter.com/chuckmonkey2010 Chuck

Couldn’t they just film 5 additional endings to the Hobbit and run them all?
- DreamboatSkanky
  
  “Okay, Gandalf, take ‘em away. I’m going to go home and sleep with my elf.”
  - http://www.flickr.com/photos/koocheekoo/ Koocheekoo
    
    Oh Clue – how I loved that movie. Thank you. I am always a bit in the minority amongst my friends on that one. ”I am your singing telegram… bang!”
semiotix

The Hobbit is actually a pretty dark story; it’s just more cheerfully told than the LOTR books. What the Tolkeinverse needs is an Apatow-style comedy to cleanse the palate before the inevitable 2016 blockbuster Rape of the Silmarils.

This summer…

Jonah Hill is…

FATTY BOLGER
Spinkter

Plenty of unmined material — more than enough for a third movie — in the Appendices of the LOTR, in The Silmarillion, and especially The Unfinished Tales — if they can figure out how to boil it down and spoon-feed it to the masses.

For those who complained about LOTR scenes that “weren’t in the book” — many of them were, actually. But not necessarily in the same book.
- http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
  
  meh, I like the appendices to LOTR and I happily read The Silmarrillion but never cared for any of the Unfinished Tales, if you are referencing what I remember as JRRT’s son raiding his dads desk files for checks. I did buy them and peruse them, but I waited and bought them off the dollar table at the book store, which they got to quickly
  - franko
    
    the thing is, the tolkien estate owns everything except the hobbit and the trilogy. there will not be anything from the silmarillion or anything else for a long, long time. that’s why the appendices have been such a rich source of bonus material for the existing films, and now the hobbit.
IronyElemental

The third Hobbit film will just be LOTR/Hobbit footage chopped and screwed Youtube-style. It will still make $125M opening weekend.

“Fool of a Took! Foo Foo Foooooooooooooooooool of a Fool (belch) Fooool!”
bzishi

I really hope this doesn’t get made. There is really no need for additional stories to be told during the late Third Age of Middle Earth. No major story arcs were created by Tolkien because they weren’t necessary.

I can only imagine it would turn out like the Star Wars prequels where an unnecessary story destroyed the canon. And with an invented story (which has to be compelling and urgent to justify making a movie about it), it would only be too easy to add post-Tolkienesque fantasy elements. And this would ruin it and miss the point altogether.

If Peter Jackson wants to create another story based in the fantasy worlds of Tolkien, he should start with the story of Luthien and Beren or other stories that Tolkien actually wrote. And please, please leave the Third Age of Middle Earth alone. The War of the Ring ended an Age. That is why it was compelling. And that is why you won’t find another story like it in that Age.
http://tokyofarm.com Spencer Cross

How hard would it be, really, for Peter Jackson — a person who is Peter Jackson – to “persuade” Warner Bros. that he can give the studio yet another epic Tolkien trilogy?

Probably harder than you think. Warner reps were pretty definitive in Variety that there will be no third hobbit film: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118056497
Chris Hogan

There are no words in Elvish, Entish or the tongues of men for this treachery.
Antinous / Moderator

Despite being a fan for 45 years and being more or less able to chant the book from memory, I’ll be skipping the films. Because they’re in 3D. If I want a splitting headache and bloodshot eyes, I can get them faster, cheaper and more enjoyably with a bottle of vodka.
- Chuk
  
  If only there were non-3D ways to watch the movie. Perhaps even in your own home.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    The screen in my head is bigger than the one in my living room. Blockbuster, CG films aren’t very interesting on a monitor. And I don’t have much faith that anything that Mr. Jackson puts on the screen will be as evocative as what’s in my head when I read, “It was a hard path and a dangerous path, a crooked way and a lonely and a long.”
    - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=542308553 Jerianne Fulton
      
      There will absolutely be a 2D option at the theatre, fyi.
- vrplumber
  
  Aren’t movies that are in 3D also released in 2D at the same time? A movie that is going to be as huge as The Hobbit (movie, two-parter, trilogy, tv series?) will surely release in as many theaters in as many configurations as possible to maximize the opening weekend box office take.
  
  As regards the possiblility of this book being turned into a trilogy, I am of two minds about it.
  
  On one hand, if the additional material is woven skillfully into the course of all three movies; and the three movies divide the Hobbit lore roughly equally, then I don’t have a problem with three movies.
  
  If, however, the first two movies pretty much sum up the story and the third movie is just some cobbled-together mix of extra footage with a thinly-veiled attempt at prolonging the franchise, then I will just skip the third movie.
  
  It seems at this point in development of the movies, the latter option is more likely, unless they do some quick editing to move plot points around in time for the first movie’s release.
  
  Here’s hoping for the best. The Hobbit is one of my favorite childhood reading experiences, and I am eagerly awaiting the movie version.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Aren’t movies that are in 3D also released in 2D at the same time
    
    Normally yes. Sometimes, we don’t get the 2D version locally. And it’s not clear that Hobbit is even coming out in 2D.
    - vrplumber
      
      That sucks that theaters in your area don’t provide both versions of the movie.
      
      What about people who can’t even see 3D properly? They shouldn’t have to pay a premium for a feature that they can’t observe.
      
      Well, I hope you get to enjoy the movie all the same. As a fan of the fiction, it would be a shame to miss this version. (as long as it is good) :)
    - TheMudshark
      
      I´ve pretty much stopped going to the movies, since it´s impossible over here to see a movie with the original, non-German dubbed soundtrack in 2D.
      
      It´s not that I get bodily discomforts from it, it´s just that the colours all look like ass.
- bzishi
  
  Nah. A 3-D movie is definitely faster on giving a splitting headache and bloodshot eyes. You have to wait until the morning with the vodka. A 3-D movie can do the same in 30 minutes.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    How old are you? For me, passing 50 meant that I could get the hangover started during the first cocktail.
- dmatos
  
  Snag two pairs of the 3-D glasses, snap them in half, and glue two right halves together (or two left). Ta-dah! 2-D movie glasses!
- curgoth
  
  Get two pairs of 3d glasses, swap lenses so both have the same polarization and watch it in 2d at the theatre?
http://www.facebook.com/brian.tither Brian Tither

This might not be impossible if it is done like the LOTR movies where the first movie is about the journey to Esgaroth, the second movie is about the White Council getting rid off Sauron from Dol Guldur, while the Dwarves get the Lonely Mountain rid off Smaug ending with Bard slaying Smaug in Esgaroth, and the third movie is about the defence of the Lonely Mountain with the first half being about Bard and Thranduil dealing with the stubborness of Thorin and the second half being about about the defence of the mountain by the Men and Elves and Dwarves from the Wargs and Orcs. It all depends on how Peter Jackson and his team use the supplementary material from the LOTR appendices, which has a lot on the history of the White Council, the history of the Dwarves dealings with the ancestors of the Rohirrim who are related to the Bardings and Beornings and the Dwarf and Orc wars, all which could be used to explain Saruman and Thorin and Dain’s motives hence helping develop their characters. Of course a plan for a third movie maybe related to the original plan to have the second movie being a bridge movie between the events of The Hobbit and LOTR and there is enough material in the appendices for that. Maybe something could be cobbled out of Aragorn’s guard of the Shire and Bree with the Rangers and his serving Thengel of Rohan and Ecthelion of Gondor and his hunt for Gollum with additional things like Balin going to Moria and Gandalf being duped by Saruman re the Ring.
- http://www.facebook.com/brian.tither Brian Tither
  
  Peter Jackson and his team with the help of Tolkien scholars also used a lot from Old English pieces such as Beowulf for the LOTR movies and I believe he is using a lot from Old Icelandic literature for the Hobbit movies and it is from Old and Middle English and Old Icelandic literature that Tolkien got his ideas. So that all could help with the development of three movies.
  - Shane Simmons
    
    You typed all of that in 15 seconds, didn’t you.
Frank Diekman

Fuck you, Peter Jackson.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Is that the sequel to Fuck me, Ray Bradbury?
http://www.facebook.com/MichaelDawson5423 Michael Dawson

“Sir” Peter Jackson
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SVV4BXZ3NUPXI34WH3EERSF64Q Seriously

LOTR is three books. Three movies, three books. The Hobbit is ONE children’s book. Three movies from one children’s book. Milk that cash cow Mr. Jackson.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  LOTR is three books.
  
  No. LOTR is one romance, divided into six books and conventionally printed in three tomes by decision of the first publisher. Mr. Tolkien is quite clear that it’s not a trilogy, it’s a single work.