The news is a few days old but I just heard about it: Guillermo Del Toro will no longer be directing The Hobbit. Sounds like the movie was taking too long and he wanted to have time to work on other projects.
"Guillermo is co-writing the Hobbit screenplays with Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh and myself, and happily our writing partnership will continue for several more months, until the scripts are fine tuned and polished" says Jackson. "New Line and Warner Bros will sit down with us this week, to ensure a smooth and uneventful transition, as we secure a new director for the Hobbit. We do not anticipate any delay or disruption to ongoing pre-production work".
Obviously Jackson should just direct the damn thing.
Update: Hmm, I just heard from a small bird that Jackson is pretty much set to direct...just finalizing the deal with the studio. On the other hand, Jackson's manager says that the director is committed to other directing projects. So I guess we'll see what happens.
