[Smug the Fabulous]

In answer to the question, if the way people are responding to these films are right, then yes. And when I say people, I mean the people I've seen commenting on Peter Jackson's Facebook page. And possibly TORN. Not that I look on that website often, if at all (but the stuff I've read on here). But I'm think The Hobbit will just be one of those one time phenomenons. Once it's been and gone, that will be it. People will simply walk away. And in several years, what we'll have left is a charming little book from the late 1930s about a hobbit who joined a wizard and a band of dwarves on a grand adventure and discovered a wider world beyond his little home.
At least, that's what I'm thinking optimistically.

On the subject of directors, I just wondered what The Lord of the Rings would be like if Werner Herzog did it? Well, since we're talking the director of Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, I like to imagine it using practical effects and locations, long uninterrupted takes, an ambient score with some classical music, and I imagine Herzog would cast actual actors with dwarfism as hobbits and dwarves and have the actors playing Frodo and Sam going up an actual volcano.