Empire Magazine Online has just released some new details on their website regarding their upcoming films which span the length of JRR Tolkien’s classic story The Hobbit. Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro told empire that the movies, which will hit theaters in 2011 and 2012, have been public knowledge for a while now, but what exactly the films would be has been cause for a great deal of speculation. It had long been rumored that the movies would span the 60 years from the start of The Hobbit up to the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring; giving viewers a chance to revisit younger versions of Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and other favorite characters from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Jackson and Del Toro confirmed that

“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. 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.”

So there you have it. This is what I was hoping for all along. I’ve always been of the mind that trying to create stories about the characters from Lord of the Rings, that aren’t currently in the canon would be a huge mistake. Or at the very least a huge mistake for the fans, (probably not for the box office), sometimes its best to just leave well enough alone. It looks to me like 2011 and 2012 are going to be movie years to mark on your calendar. Unfortunately, I still think that summer 2009 is going to be pretty barren for fans.