Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and his partner, Fran Walsh, won’t be tackling a film version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit or a second proposed Rings prequel film after New Line told them the studio would be seeking another director, Jackson and Walsh told fans on the OneRing.net Web site. Jackson said that New Line producer Mark Ordesky told Jackson’s manager, Ken Kamins, that the studio was moving ahead with the project without Jackson and Walsh because the pair declined to agree to do The Hobbit as a condition of settling a lawsuit against New Line to recoup income from the Rings films. "We have always said that we do not want to discuss The Hobbit with New Line until the lawsuit over New Line’s accounting practices is resolved," Jackson and Walsh wrote. But Michael Lynne, co-president of New Line Cinema, insisted that Jackson and Walsh commit to the project before the studio would settle the suit. When Jackson and Walsh declined, "Mark Ordesky called Ken and told him that New Line would no longer be requiring our services on The Hobbit and the LOTR ‘prequel,’" Jackson and Walsh wrote. "This was a courtesy call to let us know that the studio was now actively looking to hire another filmmaker for both projects." Jackson and Walsh added: "Given that New Line are committed to this course of action, we felt at the very least, we owed you, the fans, a straightforward account of events as they have unfolded for us. … This outcome is not what we anticipated or wanted, but neither do we see any positive value in bitterness and rancor. We now have no choice but to let the idea of a film of The Hobbit go and move forward with other projects." Those include a film version of Alice Sebold’s supernatural novel The Lovely Bones.
SciFi
Although I am probaly one of the few people who has not seen any of the LOTR movies, even I know that is a huge mistake.
