In his latest The Hobbit vlog/video blog, Peter Jackson explains that location shooting on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and its sequel The Hobbit: There and Back Again has been just about completed.
When Jackson is asked why it took him and his crew 127 days to shoot two movies, while the three Lord of the Rings movies were shot in 133 days, Jackson came up with some sound reasoning: "We’re all ten years older, so we’re going a little slower." Looking at the behind-the-scenes preparations for the shoot, The Hobbit’s filmmakers, actors, and crew deserve at least an "A" for effort.
About ten years ago, Jackson had three consecutive blockbusters with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), and Best Picture and Best Director Academy Award winner The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). Since then, Jackson’s box-office performance has been considerably less successful: King Kong (2005), starring Naomi Watts, Adrien Brody, and Jack Black, was an underperformer in relation to its $207m cost, while the otherworldly crime drama The Lovely Bones (2009), with Saoirse Ronan, Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, and Susan Sarandon, was both a critical and commercial flop.
Based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit, the two Jackson movies feature Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, Stephen Fry, Richard Armitage, Lee Pace, Evangeline Lilly, Luke Evans, Andy Serkis, Hugo Weaving, Ian Holm, Barry Humphries, Mikael Persbrandt, and Benedict Cumberbatch.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens on December 14, 2012.