The Hobbit is done (and ready for release in a matter of days) and so we enter the Third Age, with possibilities of returning to Middle Earth for other Tolkien texts still a possibility but by no means certain, and with the two most notable already adapted. Quite where Peter Jackson goes from here remains to be seen, but what is clear is that he has invested almost 20 years of his life in getting the author's grandest and most celebrated visions off the ground as memorable, celebrated films. The entire process - from the earliest days of pre-production when The Hobbit first appealed to Peter Jackson as a real project back in 1995 - has been a lengthy and creatively exhausting one, and over those many years of development fans have seen suggestions of how the films would be shaped come and go. And while everything that finally went into The Hobbit looks like it was perfectly considered and painstakingly measured, the films could have been infinitely different to their finished versions if some serious swerves in production hadn't been made, and alternate casting decisions ignored...
