The Hobbit Trilogy

On Monday this week Peter Jackson dropped a bomb shell on the world with the announcement that there would be a third  “Hobbit” film. While there have been a ton of thoughts and articles about what this means – along with lots of accusations of him wanting more money – folks have forgotten what this news really means within and without the film industry.

Consider this for a moment, movie studies are huge corporations with business plans, marketing teams, and stock holder to please. Adding a third Hobbit film means radical shifts in the licensing, marketing and publicity arms of each of the studies involved (there are three of them). As senior TheOneRing.net staff member Larry D. Curtis wrote, the ground has “shifted under the feet of hundreds and maybe thousands of people.

Consider also WHEN the announcement was made (i.e. July 30th).  There are now approximately 90-days left before the world premiere of the first Hobbit film in November. So yeah, this is not really the best time to tell one’s investors that you want to scrap all the current plans and add a third firm, which, by the way, will require a few more months of shooting…

In a nutshell, the decision to add a third film was not an easy nor a very wise political move.  To quote Larry Curtis again,

“This change is not only bold and daring, it is coming from the right place. This isn’t a money grab. This isn’t the studio stretching out a franchise. This is team Jackson feeling that a story, a complicated one with multiple threads and characters, needed more time to tell.”