Mentioned in the latest issue of Production Weekly and slowly making its way around the web, an offer has reportedly been made to David Yates to step behind the camera for “The Hobbit.”
As you’re well aware by now, “The Hobbit” lost its helmer Guillermo Del Toro two weeks ago. Yates is a no-brainer, really, for New Line and Warner Bros; while we didn’t put him on our list of potential directors a few weeks back (mainly because he was one of our possible Superman helmers earlier in the year…), his experience with magical mega-franchises makes him an obvious choices. His Potter movies have numbered among the best to date in the series and he’s popular with the studio because he brings in his pictures quickly and without much fuss, thanks to his TV training. That said Del Toro did spend two years on the film, and the production will still be utilizing his sets and designs, so Yates will be walking into a world pretty much constructed and ready to go. In other words, Del Toro’s fingerprints will still be felt.
As just as a reminder, this is just an offer and nothing close to being concrete particularly since the film still has no greenlight from MGM. However, still an intriguing bit of a news for one of the biggest projects brewing right now in Hollywood.
Here’s five directors we think could take on the job and would probably be free at the time to actually take on the job, but one of them probably won’t be Peter Jackson. But things may have changed since slightly we wrote this. Sam Raimi has been offered another job (remains to be seen if he’ll take it). A great choice who keeps coming up that is not on our list is Alfonso Cuarón and the reason we didn’t list him is because he’ll probably (hopefully) be shooting his original sci-fi project, “Gravity” instead. But if that does come apart for some reason, he would be an excellent choice.