MGM says that Jackson might direct The Hobbit

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=3&id=38974

MGM Weighs In On Hobbit

A day after Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson said he's bowing out of a film based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, MGM is saying the matter is far from closed, Variety reported.

Jackson had told TheOneRing.net that he and partner Fran Walsh were bowing out after New Line, which produced the Rings films and has production rights to The Hobbit, told them the studio was moving ahead with the project without them. Jackson has said he won't discuss The Hobbit until a lawsuit against New Line over Rings accounting practices was settled.

But MGM, which owns the distribution rights to The Hobbit, on Nov. 20 told Variety through a spokesman that "the matter of Peter Jackson directing the Hobbit films is far from closed." New Line had no comment about Jackson's statement.

In his online statement, Jackson said that New Line executive Mark Ordesky, who shepherded the Rings trilogy, argued that New Line is dumping Jackson because the studio has a "limited time option" on the film rights, obtained from Saul Zaentz.

Woot. A Keanu Reeves to star in a sequel to Constantine

My, I'll have to rush out and see this one. *YAWN*

http://www.moviehole.net/news/20061120_keanu_reeves_to_return_as_cons.html

Keanu Reeves to return as Constantine
Posted : November 20, 2006 Writer : Clint Morris

It may not have got tills ringing stateside, but overseas “Constantine” was quite the success – so much so that Warner Bros have announced a sequel, says IESB.net.

“Constantine was huge foreign, international, therefore, there is a good financial reason to make a sequel”, producer Lauren Schuler Donner tells the site. “And, I think we really want to do it as a hard R, I mean, really go into the Constantine world and do it even more justice than the movie, even though I thought the movie was true to its core. We have a terrific idea of the world we want to go into, it’s a nice, really terrifying world and Keanu [Reeves] is willing so we should do it!”

The sequel, which original director Francis Lawrence will only produce this time, will be set in a “Latin American country, I’ll say that, a South American country”, says Donner.

What if.... Stephen Speilburg & Tom Hanks made The Hobbit?

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20061126