The Hobbit to Become a Trilogy

...And the decade of trilogies continues. If one wasn't enough for Peter Jackson, the Oscar-winning director is contemplating making his most recent Tolkien adaptation into a 3-piece. As of right now, it's only a two-fer, with this December's An Unexpected Journey being the first. Next year the story will continue with... wait for it... wait for it... There and Back Again. No offense to Mr. Jackson, but the title of the 2nd part sounds like a romantic comedy with Reese Witherspoon or Hilary Duff. Could this second half be the long awaited exploration of Bilbo and Gandalf's true feelings for each other? It's unlikely.

If a third film is in the works for Jackson, he'll be the only director to ever direct TWO trilogies, a feat that no one was ever planning to challenge him for, or beat him to. The only other person to come close is the hero of our youth George Lucas, who thankfully only directed 4 Star Wars films - unsurprisingly the best film of the series he didn't get his grubby little hands on to direct (Btw, I'm referring to The Empire Strikes Back if you didn't know that). Knowing Lucas he'll probably fire back with the sequel and three-quel to American Graffiti that we've all not been longing for.

An Unexpected Journey opens everywhere December 14th, 2012 and There and Back Again on December 13th, 2013. In other news about Jackson, he's scheduled to start directing a sequel to Meet the Feebles as well, with a possible trilogy in the works thus signaling the end of the world. Still no word on when he'll produce the sequel to District 9 unfortunately. Priorities Pete. Priorities.