Ok, non-story? We’ll let you decide. Either way, Guillermo del Toro told reporters on a conference call last night to not get their hopes up for a start date on “The Hobbit.”
“There cannot be any start date until the MGM situation gets resolved because they hold [a] considerable portion of the rights,” del Toro said in his broken English. “It’s impossible to make a unilateral decision to give the greenlight to proceed. We really believe that the date will be known after they fact of MGM’s fate. Whether they stay or get supported or get some of the rights.”
Rights issues seem to be causing some further problems as well and this could prove even stickier, especially since they haven’t been sorted and the film was supposed to start shooting sometime this year. MGM and Warner Bros. both own partial rights; MGM who have been ailing financially all year, could potentially fold this year which would potentially cause a mess. MGM already received five extensions on a $3.7 billion debt they owe creditors, and currently the studio is not controlled by management but by the debt holders playing catch up on learning the ins and outs of a business they really know nothing about. The studio’s instability forced EON Productions to shut down delay “Bond 23”, one of MGM’s most lucrative franchises. It remains to be seen if the debt holders now running the show will take a chance on pouring more money into a project that they might not see a return on for years, sell the studio (though, they are currently ignoring a two-month-old offer from Time Warner to buy them out) or slowly build it back up into a profitable entity. Another possibility is partnering with another studio on the film, but again, MGM’s shaky ground could make it a very difficult proposition.
“We have been caught in a very tangled negotiation,” he said. “Now I have been on the project for nearly two years. We have designed all the creatures, the sets, the wardrobe, animatics and planned action sequences and we are very, very prepared for when it is finally triggered. We don’t know anything until [the] MGM [situation] is [re]solved.”
This mostly makes us LOL at MarketSaw who published yet another fail when they “exclusively” reported yesterday that the film had an official green light for November. MarketSaw also says 3D is locked, but del Toro says its only been discussed once so far. “Is there a chance it will become 3-D in the future? Right now it’s not being planned as such.” Nice try, MarketSaw.
