There’s been a bit of a pointless panic over The Hobbit movies recently. After Peter Jackson said they were planning to start shooting next summer, there’s been a huge amount of speculation, based purely on the fact that previous unconfirmed rumours has suggested filming would begin in late spring. Did this mean the first of the two movie would be released in 2012 rather than 2011? Were there problems with the script? Was Warner Brothers reticent to give the film the geenlight? Although what Jackson said didn’t mean any of these things, the internet has certainly been getting its panties in twist.
While Jackson has already stepped forward to try and calm people down, now it’s director Guilermo Del Toro’s turn to say that it’s business as usual, that development of the films is going ahead as planned, and that people need to relax. The problem seems to be people’s perception of what a movie being given the greenlight means. While this is indeed the moment when the studio says you can go ahead and shoot the movie, the fact a film doesn’t have the greenlight yet doesn’t necessarily mean there’s problems. It’s just that all the ducks haven’t been put in a row (such as the fact the two Hobbit screenplays aren’t quite finished and until then, they can’t put a full budget and schedule together), and once they are, the studio will give the thumbs up.
Del Toro messaged TheOneRing.net to say, “Its simple: we may say what we want but until there are two scripts delivered and budgets and schedules to support them we will be all under a yellow light of development. THAT we have not stopped. As I have reported in the past, we are scouting, designing (my last 3 hour meeting with Weta was this morning) and will not stop. BUT the greenlight and thus commencement can only be granted by the studio. Pete as producer and me as director will do everything we can in the meantime…
“Is there any trouble brewing with WB? Not at all. All I can say is that they reacted to our delivered script with great delight and we have been receiving strong support in our development…
“Smaug is being animation tested, we are editing the previs, doing final selections on Dwarven War Artifacts and Gear and starting many fabrication tests for armies, prosthetics and wardrobes, etc.”
It basically seems to be Del Toro trying to get everyone to relax and realise that everything that’s been said and changes that have been made during pre-production are normal, and not a sign of trouble. He has said he isn’t likely to give any more updates for a while, because he’s so busy preparing these two ‘behemoths’, and that can only be good news for those look forward to the two Hobbit movies.