Del Toro Not Right for 'Hobbit'?

Since completing “King Kong,” [Jackson has] moved on to directing the film version of Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones” and producing a trilogy of films based on the Tintin graphic novels of the 1960s. (Steven Spielberg will apparently direct the first one.) Anybody but me notice that smell of fried Lucas in the air?

No, I dont. Because it’s Peter Jackson and he’s not a lunatic with viewfinder. Lucas for all his genius has and continues to lose the plot (ie: trashing the Spielberg endorsed Frank Darabon Indy 4 script). Look at the great work Del Toro is doing working with Mike Mignola on Hellboy. He’s playing in someone elses backyard there and it’s working out pretty great.

First of all, hasn’t anybody noticed that del Toro has repeatedly said he doesn’t like Tolkien, and that he never finished reading “The Lord of the Rings”? Here’s what he told me in Cannes in 2006, when I asked him about the influence of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis on his own work: “I was never into heroic fantasy. At all. I don’t like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits — I’ve never been into that at all. I don’t like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff.”

I’d like to think Guillermo has been talking to Jackson for a considerable amount of time about influences and the legacy of the previous films and most importantly, the text. A quote about hairy feet made 2 years ago likely has nothing to do with Del Toro’s current passion for the project, and if there is any director who becomes completely passionate about a project, it’s Guillermo Del Toro.

Give these two cinematic visionaries a chance to create something brilliant. I know they will. The last time it happened we got Raiders of the Lost Ark - AKA the best non-Star Wars movie that lunatic ever made.

So I may have stepped all over my own argument here, so I’ll just reiterate that I’m very very very worried about Indy 4.