Slashfilm is reporting that David Yates is the front runner for the director’s chair on The Hobbit. Their source – very up to date insider tracking boards – can be fairly legit, so I’d assume that Yates’ name is definitely in the running for the gig.
If Yates is up for the job it tells us a couple of things: first of all, it means Warner Bros is very, very happy with the final two Harry Potter films, on which Yates just finished principal photography. But it also tells us that nobody at Warner Bros expects The Hobbit to go anytime soon; Yates will go into post on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One immediately or soon, but it’s likely that he won’t go into post on Part Two until later. That film has a July 2011 release date, so I would guess that Yates wouldn’t be ready to really work on The Hobbit until sometime next summer.
That makes sense. MGM is going down like a Led Zeppelin drummer filled with 40 shots of vodka. It’s going to take some time to extricate the rights to The Hobbit from that flaming wreckage, and I can’t even imagine the film getting underway before the second half of next year. I actually sort of don’t think the film will ever happen at this point, but if it does, 2011 at the earliest is what makes sense.
As far as directorial choices go, Yates is an interesting one for The Hobbit. What he brought to Harry Potter was a keen eye for the reality of the characters. I’m not sure that’s what a Middle Earth movie needs – these stories are more epic in sweep and mythical in nature.