Guillermo Del Toro To Direct Back-To-Back Features from THE HOBBIT!?!?!

Hey folks, Harry here... In the geek community for quite some time, the rumor has been that Guillermo Del Toro was going to be directing THE HOBBIT. The day that the announcement came that Peter Jackson was playing nice with New Line - and that Weta was going to be handling the fx - and everyone was a happy family again... I was talking to Guillermo about some personal issues (the Lapband operation, Guillermo had one quite a while back, and has been encouraging me to take that step. Which I am) - and during that conversation - he suddenly brought up THE HOBBIT and how he wanted to direct it and how he thought it was going to happen. Well now - the trades are reporting on it. I saw the story up this morning on Hollywood Reporter's Story - the writing on this project has not been OFFICIALLY decided yet, due to the Writer's strike, but apparently Jackson and Guillermo will oversee the script's creation. They're saying $150 million per film... and I just wonder... is Ron Perlman going to be the voice of Smaug? And will Gollum suddenly become a man in a costume via Doug Jones? (of course not, Andy Serkis will be back) But you KNOW that Doug Jones is gonna be something awesome in this. When Guillermo and I talked about it, he spoke very heartfelt about how he had to adhere to what Peter had already established - but how he couldn't wait to expand that universe with the environments, creatures and most especially Smaug. I'm giddy.