While Guillermo Del Toro insisted that neither of the two parts of his adaptation of The Hobbit would be made in DRAGON-KILLING 3D back in last August, it appears things have changed. And by things I mean Avatar‘s box office.

First, his statement from last year, originally released on Lord of the Rings fansite TheOneRing.net, which is remarkably still going.

As a co-writer and director of this film (who works with the design teams, costume teams, creature teams, VFX teams every day of the week), let me be very clear one more time: we are not talking about 3D, we are NOT writing the screenplay for 3D right now- we are hiring my DoP Guillermo Navarro to shoot the film and we are not discussing 3D with him either or with WETA digital or WB or anyone else. That should be a little less sidestepping, I hope. If after AVATAR the market may change and demands are put upon us, etc that is in the future. But if such things happen and we start discussing 3D down the line, I’ll let it be know here at TORN because that’s the proper way of doing things. But make no mistake- I’ve been living in NZ for almost a year now and we have not been discussing 3D. When we do, I’ll make sure your source finds out. Thank You, Guillermo.
 
But as we all sadly know any bit of success with a film means that the studios immediately want to piggyback that success, never remembering that there were plenty of 3D films before Avatar that failed to bring in the big bucks, and leading to them wonder afterwards (when it fails to make a billion dollars) what went wrong. As he promised Del Toro updated the site once again with developments, and here’s his new statement as posted on TheOneRing.net.

I wouldn’t read much on it just yet, but now, after all this time, after AVATAR doing the Box Office it did, we have had enquiries from above about The Hobbit being in 3-D.

No impositions or heavy leaning. Just enquiries. Just fulfilling my promise to let you all know if discussions ever started.

Cheers

GDT

Gotta love the man. The first film is supposed to hit in December 2011 with the second part hitting a year later, but if 3D is planned this might get pushed back another year.