The Hobbit in July 2007?

[Mister Underhill]

Originally Posted by Tuor

There's just too much money
to be made to let legal problems block it for too long.

The enormous amounts of money are exactly the thing that could bog it down for years. With so much at stake, interested parties are willing to fight long, grueling battles for their share of the pie. Take a look at Spiderman as an example. The movie rights court battle started circa 1991 if I'm not mistaken, and the movie didn't make it to the screen until 2002.

Jackson is also supposed to exec produce the Halo movie, but "executive producer" is a pretty slippery title which could mean anything from virtually no involvement with the project to shepherding it all the way through the process, so there's no way to judge what that time commitment looks like.