The Hobbit Team get their pens out!
It’s official, the Hobbit is underway!
‘The Lord of the Rings’ screenwriting team of Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens will join ‘The Hobbit’ director Guillermo del Toro to pen the screenplay for the two planned Hobbit movies.
‘The Hobbit,’ written by Tolkien for his children years
before the ‘Rings’ trilogy, follows a young Bilbo Baggins, who finds
his comfortable life turned upside down when the wizard Gandalf takes
him on a journey for a hoard of treasure that involves trolls, humans,
Gollum and his ring of invisibility and a dragon named Smaug.
The news caps off an eight-month search for a scribe to tackle the coveted task of bringing the literary classic to the big screen. When Jackson and New Line resolved their differences over profit participation in the ‘Rings’ films, Jackson said he would not be writing the ‘Hobbit’ movies because of other commitments, though he does have approval over creative elements in his role as exec producer.
The scripts will have to be complete by the latter half of 2009 since shooting is scheduled to begin in the autumn, with the release of the films then set for 2010 and 2011.