Posted on JRR Tolkien Examiner on 6/26/10.

Since the JRR Tolkien Examiner decided to stop reporting on unsubstantiated rumors, there has been very little to write about the upcoming two-part film adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s 1937 children’s novel The Hobbit, to which The Lord of the Rings served a a sequel.

But this rumor is too good to pass on: mainstream media sources including Entertainment Weekly are claiming that LOTR director and The Hobbit executive producer Sir Peter Jackson is in negotiations to direct both films, despite previous disclaimers to the contrary from his camp at Wellington, New Zealand’s Wingnut Films.

It was rumored that New Line Cinema and MGM were actively pursuing the post-Thinner Sir Peter as director after the previous helmer, Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro, dropped out after two years of pre-production development.

Meanwhile, the precarious status of MGM still has the potential to derail the Hobbit production; if the studio goes into bankruptcy, the studio’s 50% ownership may go along with it, making it impossible to shoot the films until the bankruptcy is resolved.