It’s been a long and shaky road but now it’s finally on! The shooting of The Hobbit movies started on March 21, and now there’s a video from the shooting on Peter Jackson’s Facebook page. I have to admit I got all teary-eyed at the end of the video, when I saw the scenes from the actual shooting.
At times I’ve been unsure of if they would get this project going at all, or if we would have to be content with the trilogy from 2001-2003. Financial problems, problems with the movie company, countless rumours about actors and crew, there’s a new director (to my great delight, as I wanted Peter Jackson from the very beginning), it wasn’t certain they would shoot the movies in New Zealand…
But now the movie (movies, there’s going to be two parts) is secure. Here’s a little more information on the project:
- The preliminary release dates are December 2012 for part 1, December 2013 for part 2.
- Three movie companies will co-operate: New Line Cinema (which was behind the trilogy), Warner Brothers Pictures, and MGM.
- The movies will be shot in New Zealand, many of the locations and sets will be the same as in the trilogy, so we will feel “at home”.
- Many actors and crew members from the trilogy will return to create The Hobbit.
- The score will be written by Howard Shore, who wrote the amazing score for the trilogy.
- All major characters from the book are expected to show up in the movie, as well as minor characters from the Middle-earth lexicon.
- The movies will be shot in digital 3-D, and also in 48fps which will give us a much more realistic and unblurry movie experience. The question is how many cinemas that will be able to upgrade their technical equipment in time for the release.