Peter Jackson Talks The HOBBIT Movie. No Greenlight Yet - 'You can’t believe everything you read'...

Merrick here...
We've taken a bit of hammering here for not covering the purported/impending "greenlight" of THE HOBBIT more fully, and not alluding to Peter Jackson's supposed direction of that project. As difficult as it may be to believe, there is (sometimes) a method to the madness here at AICN. In the case of THE HOBBIT...and how we've been covering it? Peter Jackson's recent discussion with Empire pretty much sums up where the project is at this time...and illustrates why we're taking a more conservative approach to posting about this picture....for the moment, at least. In short: when something seems reasonably solid to us? We'll put it on the site. In THIS chat with Empire, Jackson explains...

“We’ve seen these reports before, reports saying there was going to be a greenlight in a couple of days — well, a week’s gone by and there isn’t one," adds Jackson. "You can’t believe everything you read. There is only one thing you want to believe and that’s when the studio announces a greenlight. As far as I’m aware that’s not going to be today. I keep hearing positive things. Everyone’s working very hard. There’s a lot of people at Warner Bros. who are working around the clock trying to manoeuvre through the MGM complexities. MGM is a company that is about to go bankrupt and in a way they are about to take The Hobbit into bankruptcy hell with them when they go down. Warners are trying to extract The Hobbit out of the bankruptcy hell before it happens. It is just so complicated I can’t even put my head into it. It’s all to do with American copyright laws, bankruptcy laws. A lot of Warner Bros. lawyers are working round the clock at the moment trying to make it happen so let’s see."

There's much more in Empire's report, so be sure to check it out. In the meantime...just for a bit longer...because of the enormous legal complexities involved in getting the project fully up & running, it's best to take much of what we see and hear about this show with a sizable grain of salt unless such news comes from a studio, or has been confirmed by Jackson in some way, or is inescapably, obviously correct. HOPEFULLY the film will roll in early 2011 - but it sounds like some dominoes still have to fall...in just the right way...before that can actually happen. Waiting, with fingers crossed...
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