T1B

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/ne ... 1273.story" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

As part of the deal, Del Toro will relocate to New Zealand for the next four years to work with Jackson and his production teams at Wingnut and WETA. He will direct the films back to back – telling the story of "The Hobbit," and its sequel, which will deal with the 60-year period between "The Hobbit" and "The Fellowship of the Ring," the first book in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

Interesting.

i'm kinda skeptical on the "sequel". i read about that a couple months ago on a diff board.

but, i was skeptical (downright against) the whole franchise to begin with. and like Socrates, I am a man who enjoys being refuted.

i think i read somewhere the sequel is the one with the extended all elf, all chick orgy. it's like 3 chapters in the original lost manuscript....pretty sure i read something about that in a Chris Tolkein interview.

Nice! I wonder if Arwen is a squirter.

I'd rather he made "The Simillarion" than "The Hobbit" to be perfectly honest.

I agree with the first part of your statement, to a degree...but definitely not the second.

Tolkien worked on the larger picture for years, changed it quite a bit, and never really was able to sum things up. His son drew the stronger elements together into a generally coherent cosmology and published The Silmarillion. He has also sought to spin out some of the more compelling storylines for specific emphasis, Children of Hurin being one example

Certainly the LOTR relied heavily on the structure provided by the Silmarillion. Certainly a reader of LOTR will get a lot more out of the frequent songs and stanzas in that work having been familiarized with the Silmarillion.

While LOTR was a work that JRRT placed his finest writing into, it is clear that he saw it as a natural part of the larger picture.