Guillermo del Toro to direct The Hobbit

By Melissa Rose Kimbler
URL: http://www.moviemaker.com/blog/item/guillermo_del_toro_to_direct_the_hobbit_20080425/
It’s official: Guillermo del Toro, director of the Oscar-winning, Spanish-language feature Pan’s Labyrinth, has signed on to direct two movies based on the legendary J.R.R. Tolkien book. For a while it looked as though the films weren’t going to be made. In February, the Tolkien family sued New Line Cinema, claiming that the company had not paid them their percentage of the mammoth grosses made by Peter Jackson’s movie versions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The lawsuit has since been settled, and it looks like the project is back on track.