Del Toro and Jackson clarify Lord of the Rings prequels

Since the Lord of the Rings prequels were announced, there's been a lot of debate as to what the films would cover. Sure, it was finally confirmed that there would be two prequels a while back, but their actual content has been pretty uncertain. It's been rumored that the actual story of The Hobbit  would be the first movie while the second one would be a sort of bridge between that and The Fellowship of the Ring.

That idea has now been blown out of the water in a conversation Guillermo Del Toro and Peter Jackson had with Empire. “We’ve decided to have The Hobbit span the two movies, including the White Council and the comings and goings of Gandalf to Dol Guldur,” Del Toro said.  Jackson elaborated, saying, “We decided it would be a mistake to try to cram everything into one movie. The essential brief was to do The Hobbit, and it allows us to make The Hobbit in a little more style, if you like, of the [LOTR] trilogy.”

Where this leaves that material is anyone's guess, and if the prequels prove as popular as LOTR, it's conceivable that they will cover the time between the two, especially since Jackson clearly had something in mind for that. For now, though, it's mostly just heartening to hear that the directors are putting the source material first and curb their ambitions a little bit to get things right.

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