Hobbit directing rumors making you dizzy? Then grab a vomit sack and get ready for the latest. Producer Saul Zaentz says Peter Jackson will definitely direct The Hobbit. Huh?
The story comes from IMDB and TheHobbit-Movie.com, where they quote Zaentz as saying, “It will definitely be shot by Peter Jackson. ... Next year The Hobbit rights will fall back to my company. I suppose that Peter will wait because he knows that he will make the best deal with us. And he is fed up with the studios: to get his profit share on the Rings trilogy he had to sue New Line. With us, in contrast, he knows that he will be paid fairly and artistically supported without reservation.”
Once again, the will he won’t he of The Hobbit hinges on who owns the rights to it. Apparently New Line’s option to make a movie out of it expires in a year if they don’t have something done, and then Zaentz’s company Tolkien Enterprises owns the rights to make it. This fits rather nicely into everyone’s speculation that Peter Jackson’s open letter declaring himself booted off the project by New Line was really just posturing and that perhaps Peter still has every intention of making The Hobbit, despite his protestations.
Of course that might also explain all the rumors of New Line’s rush to offer the job to another director. They can stop Zaentz and Jackson from making the movie and keep all that Hobbit money themselves if they get their own movie made before their option to do so expires. Zaentz sound confident that he’ll get the rights back, but New Line knows how much money there is to be made in a Hobbit movie. It seems more likely to me that they’ll instead do a rush job on it, put out some substandard, hastily thrown together film and cash in while they can, rather than simply sit on their laurels, wait for their option to make the film expires, and then let Zaentz and Jackson just have all that Hobbit cash.
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Zaentz-Says-Jackson-Will-Do-The-Hobbit-3959.html
