Guillermo Del Toro recently announced that he will not be directing the two planned Hobbit movies:
“In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming The Hobbit, I am faced with the hardest decision of my life”, says Guillermo. “After nearly two years of living, breathing and designing a world as rich as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, I must, with great regret, take leave from helming these wonderful pictures. I remain grateful to Peter, Fran and Philippa Boyens, New Line and Warner Brothers and to all my crew in New Zealand. I’ve been privileged to work in one of the greatest countries on earth with some of the best people ever in our craft and my life will be forever changed. The blessings have been plenty, but the mounting pressures of conflicting schedules have overwhelmed the time slot originally allocated for the project. Both as a co-writer and as a director, I wlsh the production nothing but the very best of luck and I will be first in line to see the finished product. I remain an ally to it and its makers, present and future, and fully support a smooth transition to a new director”.
In more pleasant Hobbit news, someone has scanned an illustrated Russian edition of The Hobbit for the Net’s amusement. A few things stand out — Bilbo’s furry legs, the not especially inhuman goblins (orcs) and elves, and the quite inhuman Gollum:
One commenter adds some details:
According to the book The Annotated Hobbit, this Russian edition was published in 1976. The illustrator was Mikhail Belomlinskiy, who graduated from the I.E.Repin Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1960. He became known as a political cartoonist as well as a prolific children’s illustrator. He later moved to the USA.
(Hat tip to Yana.)