So it's happening. It's really happening. The long-awaited prequel to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Hobbit, goes into full blown pre-production late this summer. The original team looks to be getting back together with one major change: Peter Jackson, while still overseeing the project as a hands-on producer, has stepped back to allow a new director to take his place. That replacement is none other than geek super genius Guillermo del Toro. And he has been brought in to make not one, but two epics based upon the book and other supplemental material.

So why make two? Well, the first critique and knee jerk response is "to make more money." But it really appears to be much more complicated that that. And kind of exciting for Tolkien fans, if not simply fans of the first movie. The idea apparently isn't just to simply pad out the book into two separate stories – but rather to tell the story from a rather lengthy book, and then bridge the films with the original Trilogy.

All of the material they're looking to bridge the gap with already exists. And frankly, I cannot wait to see these folks tackle it. You see, within the timeline of Bilbo Baggins and his nephew Frodo many interesting tidbits can be found. Those tidbits, however, are presented in a very dry manner. The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings weren't just some attempt to write a great fantasy story. It was an experiment in linguistics, history and anthropology. Tolkien was creating an alternate past for our world. And in doing so he left behind a trove of information so vast, his son (named the executor of his literary estate) compiled them into the books The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and a 12 volume set of books called simply The History of Middle Earth.

Sadly, for many fans, these remaining works are not epic stories like The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, but rather dry history texts on the page and examinations of the scraps that Tolkien left behind. But this presents a rather unique opportunity. Here we have great, potentially epic sized stories that were never entirely fleshed out put in the hands of geniuses like Jackson and del Toro. Not only are they able to tell as much of The Hobbit as they want to (without being constrained to one, single feature film), but they can bring to life many of the characters and short stories that Tolkien was never able to in life.

And apparently that's the plan. If some suit at New Line wants to smile at the thought that two is better than one, financially speaking, so be it. Us fans? We get two more movies. Not to mention a couple of years to speculate just what tidbits from Tolkien's work will be brought to life.

C. Robert Cargill - - - Email Me

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