"Hobbit" to Start Shooting This Summer

By our guest blogger, Rob Stammitti

Guillermo Del Toro and Peter Jackson's epic production of JRR Tolkien's "The Hobbit" will start a little later than expected, according to filmshaft.com.

"Guillermo Del Toro’s The Hobbit will commence shooting in the summer of 2010. [Jackson] revealed, too, the script has gone through its second draft with a finish date for next month, or January. This is a minor setback as production was to begin in March."

Not too much of a setback, really, but the fact that the film hasn't been budgeted or even greenlighted yet is a little discouraging. To be fair, though, there's practically no way the film won't go ahead as planned, considering Jackson's adaptation of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy took in more than a billion dollars and garnered numerous Academy Awards.

I'm pretty pumped for the film (or films, rather, since Jackson and Del Toro chose to split the book in two and add a bit more content from some of Tolkien's other books), though I hope Del Toro's style doesn't clash too heavily. There are some things that, if stylistically changed (Gollum, for example), will completely remove people from the experience. But since Del Toro and Jackson are pretty much working together on this, I'm sure compromises will be made.

With filming set to start in summer the films are being aimed for release in December 2011 and 2012.