‘Lord of the Rings’ Writing Team Returns for Hobbit

Published by Jeff Leins on: August 21st, 2008

The Oscar-winning writing team for the Lord of the Rings trilogy will return to adapt The Hobbit with director Guillermo del Toro. Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens are set to collaborate with del Toro on the two planned films.

In case you’re Lord of the Retarded, The Hobbit is the prequel to the trilogy centering on the adventures of Bilbo Baggins. The second film would deal with the 60 year period between Bilbo and Frodo.

Jackson had planned to only executive produce the movie, but his schedule opened up and allowed him to participate in the writing process with his old pals Fran and Phillippa. Jackson and del Toro even held an eight month search to find potential scribes, but ultimately picked themselves. I would have loved to be in that meeting. “You know who would be great for this? Us.”

According to the HR, in order to make the scheduled release date for The Hobbit (December 2011), they needed people who had “intimate knowledge” of the material. New writers doing research would have taken too much time.

During a recent question and answer about Hellboy II in Sydney, del Toro said they had already started writing and the described the process as something “beautiful.” He added in a different interview that he plans to use as many non-CGI techniques as possible for special effects, like Peter Jackson did with LotR.

Principal photography is scheduled for late 2009.