Details on 3rd Hobbit Undetermined

It seems that Warner Bros and MGM have a lot of confidence in Peter Jackson as they agreed to a third The Hobbit film without a budget or script. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jackson's decision to pursue a third film kicked off a large volume of meetings as they worked towards a decision.

"If anybody had been a big hindrance, it wouldn't have happened," says a source with ties to the movies. "It was such a short window of time to make this decision, if anybody had said no, it would have been two movies."

The Hobbit writing team of Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens started the ball rolling in a meeting with in early July in a meeting with executive producer Alan Horn, New Line's Toby Emmerich and Carolyn Blackwood. While the writers went back to New Zealand for pick-up shots, the three executives started working on getting a deal done. This including locking up the cast before the official announcement.

New Line president Emmerich says the trilogy decision was not an obvious one. "Everyone involved had to make a grand leap of faith," he says. "As cynics have pointed out, The Hobbit is not an exceptionally long book, but Peter has phenomenal creative integrity and truly believes this is the best way to tell the story. We all had to trust each other, and Peter, and we sincerely believe it will be great."

Currently the budget of the first two films is around $500 million. Probably safe to assume that it will rise to around $650 million. The cost of the third film will be little bit less since it will not technically involve shooting an entire new film but adding to what Jackson had already shot for before the trilogy plan was decided. The figures do not include marketing the film which will likely take the budget of the entire trilogy into the billion range.

The Hobbit itself doesn't have enough material to support three films but once you add in The Lord of the Rings Appendices there is enough if have the imagination to add to Tolkien's notes on the history of Middle-Earth. As i09.com summarizes the new additions. The main one is an emphasis on The White Council (Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, Saruman and others) and the war they are waging against the Necromancer (Sauron) while Bilbo is on his own adventure. There is also the Battle of Dol Guldur that shows off exactly why Galadriel is shown so much respect and fear in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Other story points include a bit more on the history of Legolas as his father, King Thranduil, is part of the events of The Hobbit novel as is Gloin, who is the father of Gimli so expect at least a few sly references to show some like father like son. They also propose a theory of showing the fight of Gandalf vs crazed Thrain (father of Thorin Oakenshield, leader of the dwarves in the movies) that explains more on about the dwarf ring of power and how Gandalf got the map and key to the Lonely Mountains that kicks off the expedition to defeat Smaug and recover his dwarven treasure trove. In the end all the events come together in what will likely be the grand-daddy of epic movie war sequences - The Battle of Five Armies. Long story short, there is plenty of material to create a satisfying trilogy.