Peter Jackson Wants to Take More of Your Money By Splitting ‘The Hobbit’ Into a Trilogy

When asked at Comic-Con if he was considering turning his adaptation of The Hobbit into a trilogy of movies, Peter Jackson told reporters that those 'discussions were ongoing' and that he was currently 'talking to the studio about some of the material we can't film and we're asking them if we can do a bit more filming'

According to the Hollywood Reporter those discussions have heated up since San Diego last weekend and the production team is scrambling to prepare a budget and schedule for filming footage to round out a third film. Will this make The Hobbit another unnecessary trilogy? (Check out the gallery above to see others)

It's not surprise that studios would want the New Zealand director to mirror the success of his first Lord of the Rings trilogy (the films earned $2.9 billion worldwide), but it raises concerns that the source material may be getting stretched too thin to accomodate a new set of three films. Jackson was able to make due with one movie per book for the first set of films (despite Return of the King's eternal running time), so it makes sense he'd be able to manage to do the same for The Hobbit. One book-one movie, right? Or at the very least one book-two movies. I mean, we don't want another Deathly Hallows - Part 1 on our hands here. But if there's one thing you can count on in Hollywood, it's studios finding any way possible to squeeze another few dollars out of your wallets.

The first chapter, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, travels from Middle-Earth to cinemas on December 14th.