Peter Jackson has been updating fans of The Hobbit regarding the state of the movie, or indeed movies (plural) that are heading our way sometime in the future. The Lord of the Rings helmer spoke with Moviefone.
We’ve just delivered the script. Literally last week, we delivered the second of the two screenplays — the first draft. So the studio’s got both scripts now, which is a milestone; and if anything was holding it up, it was us doing the screenplays, because we’d just been writing as fast as we can, but it took us this long to get them finished. So we take whatever responsibility there is for the speed. And we’re now in the process of budgeting the films, and then hopefully we’ll get to a budget the studio [people] are happy with, and they’ll greenlight the movies and we’ll announce the shooting dates. I’d be pretty optimistic that we’ll be shooting before the end of the year. I would imagine October, November, we’d be shooting by. I’m not announcing it, though.
So the delay was with Mr. Jackson and co. I for one cannot wait to see what he and Guillermo del Toro who is directing the film, are going to do with the project as The Hobbit is possibly one of the very first books that I can remember reading — well, apart from the Mr. Men series.
