[Elladan and Elrohir]

My $0.02.

I think The Hobbit would make a terrific movie from adventure standpoint. Troll attacks, Warg attacks, Gollum attacks, massive Orc attacks . . . awesomeasoid.

One movie, IMHO. Two would be stretching it, and I think that you could include everything you needed in a movie about the same length as the LOTR films.

The idea about showing Aragorn in Rivendell as a boy but only identifying his mother is a terrific one, but would obviously only appeal to avid book readers (which is fine with me, because I am one).

Ian Holm is not too old to play Bilbo. He looked fine in the flashback "Riddles in the Dark" scene in FOTR, and anyway, is Gandalf lying when he tells him, "You haven't aged a day"?

Obviously Ian McKellen, Hugo Weaving and Andy Serkis come back to play their respective roles. A few White Council scenes would serve as an interesting subplot, if done properly.

Here's the Orlando Bloom cameo: Just before the Battle of Five Armies starts, you show the lines of Mirkwood Elves getting their weapons ready. You take the camera down one of the front lines, and at the end, ol' Orli dramatically raises his head and fits an arrow to the bow in his lightning-quick fashion (causing mass swoons in the audience, of course).

My one question is whether you're going to "fool" parents who thought they were bringing their kids to a children's movie. I mean, you can just picture 9-year-old Haley who reads the book, gets ecstatic about it, makes Mom and Dad take her to the theatre, and then has to watch a PJ-toned, as-violent-as-a-PG-13-movie-can-get film. That's the one con about making this movie: it changes the target audience. But, then again, if Tolkien had known then what he later knew about Middle-earth, it would not have been a children's book. So, I say, go for it, PJ!