Peter Jackson recently spoke with Moviefone about progress on the upcoming two Hobbit films, which he is producing and Guillermo del Toro is directing. 

Topic #1: Reported delays:

“Well, it’s not really been delayed, because we’ve never announced the
date. I mean it’s sort of interesting because the studio [MGM] has
never greenlit The Hobbit, so therefore The Hobbit has never been
officially announced as a “go” project, nor have we ever announced a
date.

Topic #2: The script:

“We’ve just delivered the script. Literally last week, we delivered the
second of the two screenplays — the first draft. So the studio’s got
both scripts now, which is a milestone; and if anything was holding it
up, it was us doing the screenplays, because we’d just been writing as
fast as we can, but it took us this long to get them finished.


Topic #3: Casting:

We haven’t signed any actors up yet, because we couldn’t do that until
they greenlight the movie. But I would imagine that if we get a green
light within the next month or two, we would be hopefully making some
casting announcements by, I guess, the middle of the year.

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