Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings will always remain a monumental achievement in cinema, but the same can’t exactly be said about The Hobbit. The route both movies took towards becoming a trilogy couldn’t have been more different.
When New Line opted to fund the back to back productions of the first three outings, they requested that Jackson bulk out his scripts, with the filmmaker having trimmed the source material down into two installments in the hopes that Hollywood’s major studios would be more inclined to shell out for a pair of blockbusters rather than three.
On the other hand, The Hobbit was announced as a two-parter, only for Warner Bros. to request a third when the majority of shooting was already complete. This forced the Academy Award winning director to extend the schedule in order to get enough footage. It would be fair to say that the prequel series would have been much better off as a duology, though, with Bilbo Baggins’ adventures frequently found dragging their heels.
Unless someone is willing or brave enough to try and tackle The Simarillion, it would appear as if we’ve seen the last of the Middle-earth saga on the big screen. However, according to insider Daniel Richtman, discussions have been held internally about a new feature-length movie following the rise and fall of Morgoth.
If the name doesn’t ring a bell, the first Dark Lord of Middle-earth was essentially the proto-Sauron and should be a familiar character to devotees of Lord of the Rings lore. Unfortunately, Richtman doesn’t say anything more about what to expect and this obviously remains to be confirmed.