Corona | Coming Attractions

It's not a rumor, it's a fact: talks are underway right now with The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson to make a third Hobbit-inspired movie. There's only a smattering of facts available right now to go on, but reportedly the minutia being discussed include returning several of the actors from Jackson's two Hobbit movies.

If a deal is reached (and really, who's going to say that one won't be?), Jackson would reassemble his team in New Zealand next summer and film this new Middle-earth picture.

And that's where the speculation begins to get fun. The first Hobbit movie, An Unexpected Journey, comes out this December. One year later Hobbit movie #2 gets released, There and Back Again. Those two movies would cover the action that takes place in J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbit novel, so exactly what would Jackson film for this new Hobbit/Lord of the Rings movie?

New Line Cinema doesn't own the rights to The Silmarillion, Tolkien's other better known adventure set in Middle-earth. And if the filmmaker wants to use actors from The Hobbit pair of films, the third movie would have to be some kind of bridge between the end of the second Hobbit picture and the start of The Lord of the Rings.

That's not to say that there isn't material Peter Jackson could use from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. There was material left out from the three Rings pictures, and there is also small bits of Middle-earth history that Tolkien inserted into the background story of his universe. Jackson could conceivably use one of those items as a springboard for his own original tale. If he can get the blessing of Tolkien's estate and the rights holders to the books (the Saul Zaentz company), then it's off to the races.

And who knows? If this third new Middle-earth film is an original tale, and also a hit, that could open the door for another trilogy of Middle-earth movies based on Tolkien's bite-sized pieces of lore.