JACKSON EXPANDING THE HOBBIT TO THREE FILMS

Peter Jackson says he has now found a way to extract three films from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. It was originally planned as a two-partner. The first two films are scheduled to be released in December of this year and December of next year. The third film will now be released in the summer of 2014, New Line and Warner Bros. said. Some fans of the story were skeptical about Jackson’s plan to milk three films out of a book that is only about 300 pages long. (The Lord of the Rings, its sequel, is more than 1,000 pages.) Forbes magazine, in a report about the studio’s decision, asked in a headline, “Is Warner Bros. Just Getting Greedy?” Seemingly answering that question in the affirmative, the article concluded that even if the three films are not as good as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, “there’s still a significant chance they’ll make a lot of money.” After all, the magazine noted, “as much as Star Wars fans hate the last three movies, people went to see the films in droves. The last three films grossed $2.5 billion at the global box office.”