Peter Jackson Talks THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY And TINTIN Sequel

The geek god, Peter Jackson recently talked to The Herald Sun about the 2-part Tolkien prequel adaptation, THE HOBBIT, which starts with THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY  arriving later this year, specifically about taking the directing job from Guillermo Del Toro who he collaborated with until GDT decided to leave the project..

“When Guillermo (Del Toro) was working on it I was producing it and working on the script – I was enjoying it, I wasn’t disliking it.
I thought it would be interesting to have a different sensibility directing the movie so you’d have somebody else’s version of a Middle Earth story. But by the time Guillermo left and we were wondering what to do, I just thought, ‘Well, I can imagine the version of The Hobbit that I’d like to see’.
It’s not necessarily the film he was going to make, but being part of the production for so long, at that point I’d sort of admitted to myself into the film to such a degree that it was fine to take over, I was completely OK with it.
We’ve got largely the same crew and quite a few of the same cast, so it was a reunion of sorts, which was kind of fun.”

I’m sure GDT would’ve made a wonderful HOBBIT Film but judging from the first trailer for THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, I’d say that Jackson, who helmed previous Lord Of The Rings films, hasn’t lost his magic touch, after all these years.
We were still going to get a great HOBBIT film either way.

Now, on another note, as you may recall, before THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN project was developed, the plan was for Steven Spielberg to direct the first film, which he did, and then to have co-producer Jackson direct the sequel and after that Spielberg and Jackson would decide on who would get to direct the third installment.
THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN has been well-received by critics and fans a like and also at the box office, and there’s Oscar buzz about it too, so is the sequel happening anytime soon?

“Well we’re just taking them one at a time, but the film’s certainly performed really great in the territories it’s screened in so far. So I think that the studio’s already pretty much got its heart set on a sequel.

The plan with another Tintin film is… you’d have to spend at least a year or 18 months developing the film from the point that we are now, so a lot of that development of the script and action scenes and things I can do while I’m in post-production on The Hobbit.
So the plan at this stage is to be in pre-production on the Tintin film while The Hobbit’s in post-production, and then once The Hobbit’s done I can do the motion-capture part of it.”

So there you have it, Hobbitons and TITIN fans, if there’s one thing this master storyteller can do is that he can multitask.
Can’t wait! This is going to be exciting!