At the press event for District 9 today at Comic-Con, we got to sit down with Peter Jackson, who told us that The Hobbit is not quite as close to shooting as you might think.
"The studio hasn't even greenlit The Hobbit yet, but everyone is assuming the film is all happening, you know, but it's not really the case - the studio has to approve the script first of all and have confidence that the script is going to make a good film," the director told us.
"And then we have to budget that script - because there's no budget, we don't know how much it's going to cost and you don't know until you finish the script."
But while exactly no one is predicting that this thing won't go ahead - given the power of Jackson and Guillermo del Toro combined, there's surely no way it can be stopped short of legal issues - Jackson cautioned that it'll be a while before we hear more about casting etc.
"We haven't offered the role to anybody yet. There's a process that we have to go through, a very basic process for any movie and with The Hobbit, we're about three weeks away from delivering the first script. We've been working on that for the last three months flat out, as well as finishing District 9 and The Lovely Bones.
"And then we have to budget that script - because there's no budget, we don't know how much it's going to cost and you don't know until you finish the script."
Which means we'll have to wait a while, and stick to speculating about possible Bilbos before we get the official nod.
"We'll then spend about a month breaking it down and doing the schedules and budget," says Jackson. "So we're about two months away from casting."
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