Peter Jackson has popped up to put a damper on fans’ expectations for “The Hobbit” to start production anytime soon. Back in March, reliable fan site TheOneRing.net painted a bleak picture which pretty much confirmed what everyone suspected: MGM’s current financial woes are a big reason the film has yet to get an official start date. However, in an interview with Moviefone, Jackson explains that another major reason the film hasn’t started yet: it hasn’t even been greenlit.
“Well, it’s not really been delayed, because we’ve never announced the date. I mean it’s sort of interesting because the studio [MGM] has never greenlit ‘The Hobbit,’ so therefore ‘The Hobbit’ has never been officially announced as a “go” project, nor have we ever announced a date. But there’s so much interest that people — newspapers and magazines, of their own account, say, ah, it’s likely to film in May, it’s likely to film in June, it’s likely to film in September. People make this stuff up. And then if it’s not filming in June, you get a story saying, ”The Hobbit’s’ been delayed.’ But it’s never actually been announced,” said Jackson. So you hear that nerds? Stop making shit up. Ok, that’s a bit harsh, but Jackson is right, there was never anything official; those previous start dates were most likely the tentative schedules given to actors who then passed it along to curious fans and somewhere along the way it became “official.” Welcome to the internet.
Even more interesting is that the “delayed” start was mostly due to the fact that the script wasn’t even finished yet, having only been completed last week. But with a script in place, a budget is starting to be formed once it gets approval then the thumbs up will be given: “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.”
Oh yeah, that endless stream of rumors about who is going to play Bilbo Baggins (James McEvoy, Matthew Goode, David Tennant etc) are probably just that. Rumors. While Jackson does say there have been some, seemingly informal auditions, there’s been no secret casting sessions nor any formal offers made: “We haven’t signed any actors up yet, because we couldn’t do that until they greenlight the movie. But I would imagine that if we get a green light within the next month or two, we would be hopefully making some casting announcements by, I guess, the middle of the year. We’ve done a little bit of auditioning, but we haven’t really done any meetings with actors or anything yet. We’ve just been totally committed to the scripts.”
Oh, but surely the same actors from “The Lord Of The Rings” are set to reprise their roles? Not so fast says Jackson: “….any character that’s returning from ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ we obviously would love the same actors to play. But even those actors haven’t been approached yet, or there [haven’t] been any deals done. And the studio wouldn’t organically do any of that until they’ve greenlit the film.”
So what does this all mean? While Jackson does say that he’s “optimistic that we’ll be shooting before the end of the year,” the project clearly has a quite a few hurdles to clear in getting there. The biggest and most obvious one is getting a budget in place that will work for the cash strapped MGM who even be under new ownership by the time the film gets rolling. While the film will undoubtedly be a worldwide smash, for MGM it would be pretty much betting their dollars on a single horse, on a production that won’t start seeing profit until at least a year or two after it hits theaters. They would certainly need to get outside financing, but given the studio’s currently, wobbly status it might be hard sell for investors, even with a franchise as lucrative as “The Hobbit.”
The other interesting thing to note, are the previously rumored start dates. While they weren’t official our guess is that they are the dates Jackson and co. had suggested actors keep clear, but as the film kept getting delayed it continued to be bumped. Our guess is that as the production keeps shifting, and particularly if it doesn’t meet its fall start date, getting some of the crossover, LOTR’s cast is going to be difficult as they will be moving on to other projects. Actors can only keep their calendars open so long until they need to get back to work. So, don’t be surprised if new (and relatively unknown) actors start getting cast in those roles.
This also means that a 2012 release seems unlikely. With principal photography set to be about a year long, and post-production work to match, our guess is that if the film goes in front of cameras this fall, a 2013 release (unless they really crank it out in post-production) is looking more and more realistic.