The Hobbit's coming

#1 - THERE AND BACK AGAIN, AND THEN THERE AGAIN There's been much talk in recent months that the directing gig for J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (the book that the Lord of the Rings trilogy was technically a sequel to) would be going to Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth), but this week, it became official. The screenwriting hasn't started yet, but the writing trio behind Peter Jackson's Tolkien movies are expected to join Del Toro to form a quartet, aiming to get it ready to start on two movies, back to back, starting in 2009 for releases in late 2011 and late 2012. The first movie will be the actual adaptation of The Hobbit, while the second movie will be the long-discussed theoretical "middle story" between The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, based upon hundreds of notes and concepts left behind by J.R.R. Tolkien, telling us what characters did after The Hobbit, or before LOTR (or both). Ah, but the news from the world of Del Toro doesn't stop there. He's been promoting Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and some fanboy reporter types have been asking him questions. First up, the Spanish director revealed recently that he has plans for another "little fantasy" movie in the spirit of The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, entitled Saturn and the End of Days, about a boy who watches the Rapture and the Apocalypse happen around him as he goes about his daily business of going back and forth to the grocery store and such. The subject of Hellboy III also came up this week, which Del Toro confirmed would be the end of the road for the character and his friends. Apparently someone somewhere also thought to think of Del Toro directing a theoretical adaptation of the recent hit videogame, Bioshock, which IGN Movies then inquired about, but nope, he's not doing that. Based on what he says in that piece about Saturn, it sounds like he won't be doing his dream project of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness anytime soon either, because of a lack of financing which is outside his (current) grasp. After the Tolkien movies, however (like in 2013 or later?), I suspect that might not be so much an issue.