So word today that Peter Jackson and New Line have settled their tiff over a quarter billions dollars, or so, and that the way is open now for a film version of The Hobbit to proceed.

Okay. Great. I loved (with the exception of my fanboy objection to the elves showing up at Helm’s Deep) the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.

And yet I have mixed emotions at this announcement because Peter Jackson will only be executive producing The Hobbit. Apparently he’ll be too busy directing…the Tintin movie trilogy?? At least the French will be happy…

Okay. I can get past this so long as they get Ian McKellan to play Gandalf again and Ian Holm to play Bilbo (I guess they’ll have to tape his face back for the whole movie they way they did for the flashback scene in FotR of Bilbo’s discovery of the Ring–the man is in his late 70s…)

But then…

But then there’s news that the movie will actually be TWO movies.

The first would deal with the events in the novel, while the second, imagined entirely by Jackson and Walsh, would link the conclusion of The Hobbit to the start of The Fellowship of the Ring.

In a way that makes sense–The Hobbit is, after all, about a bunch of greedy adventures intent on stealing as much of a dragon’s gold as they can, no matter the destruction it might cause.

But why, oh why does everyone have to keep going back to the well? Is there no shred of artistic integrity to be found in anyone in Hollywood?

Perhaps not, considering that Sam Raimi is being considered to direct.

Now, I’m a fan of Raimi’s early work–small, low-budget cult films where he couldn’t hurt anybody.

But what this film needs, if it can’t have Peter Jackson directing, is someone who is an uberfan (like Peter Jackson) of Tolkien’s works.

Sam Raimi is a self-confessed Spiderman uberfan…and look how he ran into the ground what he claims to have loved most. Now, while not a huge fan of the first two Spidey movies, I’ll admit they were pretty good. But Spiderman 3? It was so bad it actually went back in time and tainted the previously pretty good Spiderman 1 and Spiderman 2.

Do we want this to happen to LOTR? I think not.

Let the guy who directed Pan’s Labyrinth direct The Hobbit–he at least can put a movie together the right way.

– S.