Deadline chats up Peter Jackson, who’s mulling what to do with all his extra Hobbit footage and also dreaming of all the Middle Earth material in the appendices — over a hundred pages of chronologies, genealogies, and linguistic notes. Deadline thinks an extra movie is a bad idea if it just stretches out Gandalf snooping around Dol Guldur and the daily doings of Dale, but we say…there’s certainly a lot of material there. Let Peter Jackson make his Tolkien fan fic films! While using existing Hobbit footage wouldn’t be appropriate, you could make a whole movie out of the tale of Aragorn and Arwen. Or how about a movie about Balin and crew going to Moria and getting blasted by the Balrog. Think of it as the unseen backstory to Prometheus.
Heck, how about a Game of Thrones style HBO miniseries based on the Silmarillion. It’s got violence, maiming, miscegenation and incest—perfect material. I jest, I jest…film rights to The Silmarillion haven’t been parceled out and the Tolkien family has generally turned a cold shoulder to the popular movie trilogy.
In the meantime, for the huddled wretches who couldn’t get into Hall H, there’s the above Hobbit process featurette with footage from Comic-Con. Aside from reminding us that December can’t come soon enough, our takeaway: Richard Armitage (Thorin) is quite tall for a dwarf.
Heidi MacDonald is the founder and editor in chief of The Beat. In the past, she worked for Disney, DC Comics, Fox and Publishers Weekly. She can be heard regularly on the More To Come Podcast. She likes coffee, cats and noble struggle.
How about Aragon and Gandalf’s search for Gollum as a buddy “cop” movie!
Gandalf: I’m getting too old for this s#*%. No, really, I’m like 2,000 years old.
“Ye olde Lethal Weapon”
“Run, Sméagol, Run”
“Strider and Stormcrow”