Guillermo Del Toro leaves The Hobbit

According to the special features they had even more endings filmed, showing what ALL the characters got up to.

And Jack Nicolson, and my dad, both walked out before the credits started. Kings among men.

I've rewatched the LOTR trilogy a couple of times, and I've realised they really are overblown movies. There are excellent set-pieces in there, but christ-on-a-bike they're surrounded by gloopy exposition and endless fucking talk about "fate" and "hope".
1st movie - an hour before anything actually happens? C'mon, I don't give a fuck about Bobbin's Birthday Bash and drunken midgets.
It only kicks off once they all sit round and argue till Sharpe decides he'll help and Ulrika Johnson offers her bow etc etc.

And don't get me started on the 19 endings for ROTK.
This clip sums it up:


**edit**
Wank, embed code won't work

Edited at 16:18 on 31/05/10

As I said on my twitter feed, I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, that frees him up to do other projects, so that's good. I mean, I'd love to see Saturn and the End of Days, At the Mountains of Madness, that pulp-adventure take on Frankenstein, or any of the other projects Del Toro has been talking about move forward now. On the other hand, DAMN IT! I was so excited to see Del Toro's take on Tolkien's world, and now this just sort of gets heaped on the pile with the rest of the "What might have been" projects.

Well at least Michael Bay is unavailable...

How much have they already spent?
It'll be picked up by the fucking Weinsteins who passed on the LOTR originally, squeezed into 1 movie and directed by Lasse Halstrom.
I'd love to see a Lars Von Trier or David Lynch version.

That is terrible news. Just terrible, and I'd rather they just didn't make it than release a sub-par 3-D mess of a thing. Which they now probably will.

Damn.

Also, "weak lemon drink"; nice one Simon Quinlan.