Peter Jackson’s in a Hobbit hole of his own making
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro, two of the best filmmakers in the business, have been searching long and hard recently for somebody to write the screenplay for the two upcoming Hobbit movies. (Yes, two.)
But they can’t anybody. And they seem to have come to the conclusion that,if you want something done, do it yourself. So they’re going to write both screenplays to their own liking - and it’s possible, just possible, that Ian McKellen is going to figure into the second move as the primary hero.
Which makes sense. What characters could possibly fit into the niche of a movie that doesn’t have a book to flow from? There are stories by J.R.R. Tolkein that could fit the gap, sure, but they’re little more than notations in the larger work. The beefiest story they can fit into it is Gandalf’s efforts to expel a necromancer from a certain set of woods - a necromancer that, as it turns out, is Sauron, the antagonist of the three Lord of the Rings movies.
Who knows. Either way, McKellen is happy to play Gandalf twice more. Here’s hoping he gets the chance.