fter years of fighting between Peter Jackson and New Line a feature film adaptation of The Hobbit is finally on the way (and to think, all it took was the collapse of New Line to make it happen). The incredible success of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy made this announcement inevitable, but for a while it seemed as though it would never happen. Peter Jackson will be involved once again, but sadly he won’t be directing. After dedicating over five years of his life translating The Lord Of The Rings to the screen, Jackson has decided that he needs a much needed rest from Tolkien. That’s not to say that he won’t be involved with the film. Jackson will still be producing and writing The Hobbit and is the man responsible for turning it into a two-movie venture (the first will be The Hobbit, the second will be an original story that will bridge the gap between the new movie and the original trilogy). He just won’t be calling “action” this time.

Since it was announced that Peter Jackson had elected to take his name off the director’s chair for this outing, there has been a great deal of speculation about who will be running the set on the new movies. Jackson did such an incredible job of staying true to J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic work while still retaining his own personal style that it is almost impossible to imagine anyone else calling the shots in Middle Earth. The first name discussed was Sam Raimi. While Raimi is a brilliant technical director who already has two trilogies under his belt (The Evil Dead series and the Spider-man movies), he simply wouldn’t be right for this job. Raimi is an amazing visual stylist who knows how to work with special effects and orchestrate stunning action/suspense sequences, but he simply isn’t as good as Jackson when it comes to storytelling or character development. He did craft one realistic character-driven thriller (A Simple Plan), but everything else that Raimi has ever made is pure comic book fantasy. That style has served him well in his wonderful movies, but it just doesn’t suit the Tolkien universe. The second name discussed was just hired for job and it is an inspired choice. The director of The Hobbit will be none other than Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro.