SAN DIEGO — Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” films already took an immense amount time to shoot. But now the acclaimed “Lord of the Rings” director wouldn’t mind filming even more, as he and Warner Bros. are in “discussions” of turning the second film into an “extended edition” or even two different movies.
HitFix asked Jackson at Comic-Con if he and his team was in fact considering splitting “The Hobbit: There and Back Again” — aka “The Hobbit 2.”
“That’s a discussion we’re having, yeah,” Jackson said. “We have certainly been talking to the studio about some of the material we can’t film, and we’ve been asking them so we can do a bit more filming next year. Which, I don’t know what would come of that, whether it’d be extended editions or whatnot. But those discussions are ongoing.”
Some of what Jackson was hoping to film would be found in J.R.R. Tolkien’s supplementary material.
“I’d like to shoot a bunch more material that we [couldn’t] shoot. There’s so much good stuff in the appendices that we haven’t been able to squeeze into these movies,” Jackson said, referring to the appendix sections found at the end of “The Return of the King” detailing more background on Middle Earth and its history.
The first film “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” due Dec. 14 this year, and “There and Back Again” were filmed back-to-back out of New Zealand. In all, it took more than 250 days to shoot, with a couple big delays and gaps between March 21, 2011 when shooting began and July 6, just last week, when principal photography wrapped. Jackson has never denied the possibility of more shoots for 2013, but it’s also clear that turning “Hobbit 2” into “Hobbit 2: Part 1” and “Part 2” could be on the table.
Stay tuned for Drew McWeeny’s take on Jackson’s Hall H “Hobbit” presentation from Comic-Con, and for more video footage of Jackson and “The Hobbit” co-stars Ian McKellan and Richard Armitage.