Here’s a story that, like the David Yates one last week, was pretty much inevitable after Guillermo Del Toro stepped away from The Hobbit, but which could well be true. The much trusted and normally accurate TheOneRing is saying that they’ve received a spy report stating that District 9’s Neill Blomkamp has already been hired to direct the Middle Earth movies.
They’re not prepared to say it’s definite, as it appears it comes from a single source and they can’t get anyone else to confirm it, but as other parts of what they’ve been told check out, they’re prepared to put the rumour our there. They speculate that if Blomkamp has been hired, they’re keeping it quiet so that they can announce it at Comic Con in July.
In many ways Blomkamp makes sense, as he’s Peter Jackson’s protege. It also seems that while the studios are trying to talk him into it, Jackson really doesn’t want to direct The Hobbit movies, but he does want somebody he completely trusts. The District 9 director certainly fits that, as Jackson produced his alien movie and also hired him to direct Halo, before that fell apart.
The only question is whether Blomkamp would want the job, as he’s said before that he’d prefer to stay away from massive budgets so that he can keep more control, but working in New Zealand (that is, away from both the executives at MGM and Warner) with Peter Jackson backing him up, may give Neill the confidence that he isn’t just there to point a camera for the studio.
It seems that if Blomkamp is directing, we’ll hear it officially at Comic Con, and with the production needing a helmer yesterday, even if it isn’t Blomkamp, someone with be installed by then.