The lack-of-females can maybe be handled by, erm, inventing some love interest for Bilbo that never made it into J.R.R’s books. Well, yes, it would be a literary travesty, but is that a box-office bad thing?
Seems that if they can fiddle with other parts of it, they might also draw out the fight with the spiders a bit. And add to Bilbo’s encounter with Gollum, and add a magical adventure in Rivendell or so, and…
They’ve already shown that they won’t be particularly faithful to the books (arguably can’t be), so we can best hope that the extra parts will at least be tolerable, maybe even good.
I kinda liked the idea that Peter Jackson threw out in one of the LOTR DVD commentaries, to do a TV series about the Ents. (They solve crimes, only very slowly.)
Well, I’'m going to hope for a different rationale. The LotR movie were so incredibly successful while being reasonably faithful to the books, though I am really hoping that Fran and Philippa keep their filthy mitts off this script, you might think that the powers that be will have the balls to go against conventional wisdom and not insist on some contrived female role or love interest. If there was ever a case where the creative people have the credibility and certainty of financial success to make such a demand this is it.
Sorry but that came across as snarky – suffice it to say that I did not purchase the extended editions for that exact reason (and people scoff at the idea that it would be foolish to shoot the Scouring)
BUT! Saruman is a wizard! Perhaps… it was all an e-LEW-sion! It’s MAGIC! Or maybe he regenerates 1 HP/round unless damaged by fire or acid!
Okay, perhaps not. Anyway, it’s probably unlikely that Christopher Lee would be too keen on reprising the role after being edited out of ROTK.
BUT! What if it’s not SARUMAN, but his BROTHER? His long-lost twin brother Sarudave, separated at birth? Only Sarudave is EVEN MORE EVIL! He’s back in town, gunning for the killers of his brother! It’s payback time! And this time… it’s personal!
It occurred to me post-edit window that there are probably SDMB members named “Dave” or variants thereof. “Sarudave” is not a reference to any of them. The character of Sarudave, all licenses and merchandising rights thereto are administered solely by the literary estate of Barry Tolkien.
Maybe they’ll flesh out Radagast the Brown in this one. He got mentioned in The Hobbit, and made a brief appearance in FOTR, being a buddy to eagles and all.
The White Council’s attack on Dol Gulder ought to be good material for such a project, too. That’ll mean face time for not only Gandalf, but Saruman, Galadriel, Elrond, and Cirdan too! And maybe Glorfindel.
