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After much thought and consideration, New Line, MGM, and Warner Bros. have all decided to return to Middle Earth one last time in order to embark on a journey that some might call "unexpected".

 

This week, the three production companies and the mastermind behind the project, Peter Jackson, announced that The Hobbit, which had initially been broken into two films, will now be extended into a trilogy. The third film is scheduled for a release in the summer of 2014.

 

Although Jackson has been successful in the past concerning trilogies (ever heard of The Lord of the Rings?), I must say that I was taken aback a bit with his decision to split The Hobbit into three separate films. Jackson excels in the art of telling a well thought-out and meticulous narrative on screen (I mean, the guy won 11 Academy Awards in 2004 for The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King), but this time around, he doesn’t have as much raw material to work with.

 

When making the LOTR trilogy, Jackson based the films off of three lengthy novels written by J.R.R. Tolkien, but for The Hobbit, Jackson only has a single book containing a little over 300 pages to work with. So, the question must be asked: does he have enough material to make a trilogy?

 

Jackson says that he has a lot of extra footage from the first two films, and he is planning on returning to New Zealand in order to to get more for the last movie in the series. Although I am not 100% confident in this decision to make a trilogy, Jackson appears to know what he is doing. I will have to take a leap of faith and believe that this Oscar-winning director will once again make a trilogy that has the ability to take my breath away. 

 

 

- Kayla Fasold, YH Staff