After being one of the biggest news saga's of 2006, talk about
The Hobbit movie has completely died. Last we heard,
Sam Raimi was being touted to helm the picture that New Line are desperate to get into production before their film rights expire and they return to the Tolkien estate, who sensibly will want to go with
Peter Jackson for their movie. A short list of directors have turned up at
AICN. These are apparently the names that New Line want to direct The Hobbit, along with some other names that have cropped up recently...
Sam Raimi It's looking more and more unlikely that Raimi will direct a fourth
Spider-Man movie, which leaves him completely free to do whatever project he pleases. If his heart is in it, this surely has to be the best choice to helm the picture? He has the vision and the style and his first two Spidey movies were extremely faithful to their source material. The only question I would have, is that does Raimi really want to helm such a big studio driven project so soon?
Peter Weir Great choice here, straight out of left field. He can bring such a great atmosphere to movies and he really takes care and effort with every one. He rarely makes a bad movie and I absolutely adore
Master and Commander and
The Truman Show. Great choice.
Stephen Sommers Good, god no. Sommers is a frustrating director. I really like the idea behind his movies (
The Mummy,
Van Helsing) because they are exactly the type of movies I would make. It's just a shame he has to use the crappy CGI style for his flicks and that he totally forgets about substance. AVOID!
Michael Bay Yeah... sure. If you want Hobbits to carry guns and be 6 foot tall. Can't help but think his name was mentioned as a joke. AVOID!
Brad Silberling He directed
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, which looked absolutely superb but didn't have much substance. Has the right visual eye for the flick for sure, but a couple more character based movies on his filmography would be needed before I could get comfortable with this choice.
Bill Condon I've never seen one of his flicks so I don't know.
Dreamgirls,
Kinsey and
Gods and Monsters are his most famous works. Why the hell haven't I seen a movie about director
James Whale? I HAVE TO SEE THAT MOVIE! So there's the list. I'm going to run this as a poll today, so get yourself voting as who you want to see direct The Hobbit. My choice in order would be....
Sam Raimi Peter Weir Brad Silberling Bill Condon Stephen Sommers Michael Bay
Although of course it would never get down as far as Silberling for me because after Raimi and Weir... I would divert my eyes elsewhere. In an ideal world, this talk would be irrelevant and Peter Jackson would be helming, but of course the world is often very far from ideal.