Del Toro Quits 'The Hobbit'

[Son of Númenor]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

was excited to see Del Toro's darker, more fantastic sensibility in The Hobbit.

I was too. I hadn't seen Pan's Labyrinth until a few days ago and was really impressed with the mythic/archetypal characters he created. It definitely opened up my imagination with regards to how The Hobbit movies could turn out.

It will be very interesting to see what happens in terms of a new director. At this point it seems logical for Jackson to step in. Tintin is in the can, and he got a palette-cleansing, smaller scale film out of his system with The Lovely Bones.

I sincerely hope Jackson does not do these films. He has made some real garbage since the LOTR trilogy IMO.

A name that pops to my head is Alfonso Cuaron. He directed The Prisoner of Azkaban, the most highly critically regarded of the Harry Potter films, produced Pan's Labyrinth, and generally has a good directorial touch with regard to character and setting. But I doubt he's even in the consideration.

The business of bringing The Hobbit to the big screen has become a saga in and of itself, hasn't it?

The road goes ever on and on, down from the high-rise offices where the legal wrangling began...