The Score

Illustration by John Howe.

Excitement has us in it’s ferocious (and slightly sweaty) grip as The Hobbit, finally, is confirmed for production and Guillermo Del Toro is confirmed as Director.

While many fans still clamour for Jackson to direct the tale of Bilbo, some bearded fellow, a few short chaps and a giant lizard; we can’t help feeling that a director of Del Toro’s visual extravagance and uniqueness will bring something truly refreshing to the franchise. The Hobbit is, after all, very different in tone to The Lord Of The Rings, involving many new characters and a couple of belting set-pieces. Frankly, if the director of the utterly wonderful Pan’s Labyrinth can’t do this, no one can; it is, in our opinion, a perfect marriage of project and director.

As you’ve also no doubt heard, he’ll actually be creating two films - the first to be The Hobbit we know and love and the other to bridge the 70-odd year gap between The Hobbit and LOTR. But fear not, apparently this second story will be heavily based on some of the extensive and detailed stories and notes Tolkien left that went unpublished, so there’s no reason to think there’ll be any kind of quality-dive.

We fully expect Jackson, Phillippa Boyens and Fran Walsh to be on scripting duties again and, of course, the films are being shot in New Zealand, so continuity of theme shouldn’t be an issue. In fact, Del Toro has gone on record stating that he has huge respect for what has already been accomplished and realises that he needs to be faithful to what has been created thus far.

Once Hellboy 2’s out the way, Del Toro is off to New Zealand for four years of filming, so we imagine we won’t be seeing The Hobbit in cinemas until 2011.

Someone fetch the DeLorean, we can’t wait that long…

Jim