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Martin Freeman is set to star as Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's two-movie adaptation of The Hobbit... Thorin Oakenshield...Richard ArmitageFili...Aidan TurnerKili...Rob Kazinskyetc...

This is a surprising turn of events for The Hobbit. When a small coalition of actors’ unions in New Zealand and Australia pushed actors’ guilds across the world to boycott work on the films, citing an unfair residuals arrangement, Peter Jackson responded by threatening to move the production to Eastern Europe. But that would never happen, right? The organizations wouldn’t push away a huge chunk of work like the two Hobbit films by holding firm to a set of demands for which the production and backers at Warner Bros. have sought appropriate solutions — that would be crazy. And yet...

Message board member ranger123 alerted us to a people.co.uk article from Oct 3 stating that COLD feet and Murphy’s Law star James Nesbitt is making plans to pack up his family and move to New Zealand, having secured a ‘major’ role in “The Hobbit.” Nesbitt, 45, and actress wife Sonia Forbes-Adam, also 45, have talked to their daughters Peggy, 12, and Mary, eight, about the benefits of staying on to make a fresh start. The Northern Irish star believes it will be good for his career and family life. A source said: “‘The Hobbit’ was always going to mean a...

OSCAR WINNER PETER JACKSON TO DIRECT “THE HOBBIT” IN TWO INSTALLMENTS Peter Jackson Set to Direct J.R.R Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” In a Two-Part 3D Production of Extraordinary Scope(Los Angeles, October 15, 2010) The two films based on “The Hobbit” are now greenlit and will begin principal photography in February 2011, under the direction of Peter Jackson, it was jointly announced today by Toby Emmerich, President and Chief Operating Officer, New Line Cinema, Alan Horn, President and Chief Operating Officer, Warner Bros. and Steve Cooper, co-Chief Executive Officer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.. “Exploring Tolkien’s Middle-earth goes way beyond a normal film-making experience”...

"What seems like eleventy years later, The Hobbit is finally a done deal. MGM, New Line and Warner Bros. have officially greenlighted the two-part Lord of the Rings prequel, featuring the adventures of Frodo's uncle, Bilbo Baggins, with Peter Jackson triple-threating as writer-director-producer. LOTR partners Fran Walsh (aka Mrs. Jackson) and Phillipa Boyens will also work on the script."

We generally tend to pass over the news on MGM‘s financial machinations, but this month there is some big news on the future of the company that owns the Stargate franchise. Since it is bound to stir questions among Stargate fans (not to mention fans of James Bond and The Hobbit, as both film franchises are waiting on MGM’s ability to pay for them), we wanted to let you know what’s up

The New York Times is busting out major headlines today: First with the revelation that ‘The Hobbit’ films will be filmed in 3-D, and now, all but confirming Peter Jackson will direct the two ‘prequels.’ (Woo Hoo!!! – Sorry, had to get that in there) According Michael Cieply’s article, an announcement to this affect will be coming in the next few days.

You can be forgiven for being skeptical that "The Hobbit" will ever be made. Back in October 2007, Entertainment Weekly announced on its cover that Peter Jackson would be putting together a prequel to his "Lord of the Rings" films based on the J. R. R. Tolkien book series. Since then, everything has gone wrong: Jackson sued New Line over the rights to the film; the Tolkien family then sued them as well; MGM, one of the two studios planning to distribute the film, ran into the money woes (which are also holding up the James Bond films); Guillermo Del...

"Like the name of Bilbo Baggins' sword, threats being made by acting unions regarding production of The Hobbit are really starting to sting. So much so that Peter Jackson, the executive producer behind the Lord of the Rings prequel, is now suggesting that shooting could very well move to Eastern Europe—or even shut down—if things don't get resolved with the various acting unions in New Zealand that are encouraging its members not to work on a film that employs nonunion actors."

"Perhaps Bilbo Baggins' tale of wanderlust won't be leaving the Shire after all. Numerous international unions, including SAG and AFTRA, have sent out alerts advising members to ditch work on Peter Jackson's highly anticipated production of The Hobbit."

In the midst of piles of Lord of the Rings merchandise on every shelf, Tolkien’s wisdom is applied to just about everything — Tolkien and industrialization, Tolkien and communism, Tolkien and religion, etc. What’s surprising, especially in today’s hypersensitive post-Gloria Steinem world, is the dearth of commentary on Tolkien and women.

Scale model awesomeness! Check out: http://madshobbithole.wordpress.com/

We recently got our hands on what we think is some authentic Bilbo casting and production information which seemed to contradict something we knew with absolute certainty: The Hobbit production wanted Martin Freeman for Bilbo and has since as long ago as last year. Seemingly at odds with that fact was apparently concrete casting details about Bilbo and actors still giving audition tapes. Was the role sewn up or not? A spy has provided an exclusive clue or two about what the role of Bilbo will be like and even a plot detail and a production outline but we were...

100,000 characters. Nine companions. Three masterworks. One Man to do it all. Following his recent sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Canadian actor Charles Ross returns with his show One Man Lord Of The Rings for a full UK tour (plus a show in Dublin) in September.

Magpie writes: Doug Adams is letting us peek inside his upcoming book on the LOTR film music. Check out musicoflotr.com.

Tolkien and Dickens descendants collaborate on children’s fantasy August 11th, 2010 by xoanon Poet Michael GR Tolkien’s reworking of classic children’s fantasy is read for audiobook by Charles Dickens’s great-great grandson. It is a match made in publicists’ heaven: the grandson of JRR Tolkien and the great-great grandson of Charles Dickens have collaborated for the first time on a verse retelling of a classic fantasy story. Poet Michael GR Tolkien, the eldest grandson of the Lord of the Rings author, was inspired by Florence Bone’s prose fantasy for children, The Rose-Coloured Wish, first published in 1923. Telling the story of...

Funny LOTR's video on youtube.

It's getting scary in this country. REALLY scary. And I can't help but feel that we are headed toward some kind of real conflict within the nation. Face it folks, we are the 'unfavored, rotten, racist' people of this country now, at least in the eyes of the government and their dead-beat supporters. To them, all we're good for is to feed the beast with our money. And if we refuse? I can see it now, a group of outnumbered, like-minded, freedom loving Americans holed in at their Helm's Deep, while being accosted by a ragtag army of gangbangers, illegals,...

Ancestors of a hobbit-like species of humans may have colonized the Indonesian island of Flores as far back as a million years ago, much earlier than thought, according to a new study published Thursday. These early ancestors, or hominins, were previously thought to have arrived on the island about 800,000 years ago but artifacts found in a new archaeological site suggest they might have been around even earlier... The arrival of hominins is also believed to have resulted quickly in the mass death of giant tortoises and the Stegondon sondaari, a pygmy elephant, on the island. In their paper, the...

Actress Kate Madison, a fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, spent six years and her entire life savings creating a prequel to the films. Miss Madison, 31, spent £25,000 on the film, Born of Hope, which has already been watched by more than half a million people on YouTube. The story was inspired by just a couple of paragraphs written by JRR Tolkein in the appendices of The Lord of The Rings. "The film has gone down really well with the fans and some say it is even better than the Peter Jackson movies which is amazing," she...