In an interview with Collider.com regarding ‘The Lovely Bones,’ Steve ‘Frosty’ Weintraub was able to get the skinny on what is going on with the start of the filming of ‘The Hobbit’ movies and when they are targeted for release. According to Jackson, the plan is to still release the first film in 2011. Follow the link for the story and video. Thanks to Mr. Weintraub for the heads up!

Eleanor writes: Sky Movies Greats in NZ is doing A Christmas Spotlight on Peter Jackson preceding the LOTR movies. I’m not sure if it’s been on tv before, but I thought you might be interested!

From Digg: We’re sitting down with Academy Award-winning Director Peter Jackson in anticipation of the upcoming release of his new movie, The Lovely Bones, for our next Digg Dialogg. We’ll be asking him the most popular questions submitted and voted upon by you. From now until Thursday, December 3rd at 5pm PT you can submit and Digg up questions to decide which will be asked. More..

The Hobbit Movie LogoA few days ago, we reported here that Peter Jackson has indicated filming for The Hobbit will be delayed to mid-2010. Doing the math on how long it took to film The Lord of the Rings movies was sobering with respect to achieving a 2011 release, but we found reason to be optimistic in the fact that many sets, set designs, etc. won’t have to be created from scratch. Today, however, we’ve been alerted to more sobering news on the release from the WaxWord blog over at thewrap.com:

“Executives close to the project said that Warner Brothers is now likely to release the first film at the end of 2012, and not at the end of 2011 as had been hoped for by the fans. The second part would be pushed to 2013.”

No need to lose hope for a 2011 release yet though. The article also quoted PJ as saying a final decision about the release dates won’t be made until the screenplays, budget and schedule are complete. More than ever, all eyes are on Guillermo, Peter, Fran, Phillipa and the studio.