By the way, Darkman, that's a quite unfortunate translation.  A hilarious one I think you should keep, but unfortunate

Paul Blart looks good.

The Hobbit, based on the novel of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien, are two films in development for release in December 2011 and December 2012. The films will be directed by Guillermo del Toro, with The Lord of the Rings film trilogy director Peter Jackson serving as executive producer and co-writer. Originally, the first film would have adapted The Hobbit and the second would have carried over into The Lord of the Rings; but the writers decided it was better to cover the novel over both films.

Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh expressed interest in 1995 in filming The Hobbit, which would be part one of a trilogy (the other two would have been based on The Lord of the Rings).[1] Frustration arose when Jackson's producer, Harvey Weinstein, discovered Saul Zaentz had production rights to The Hobbit, but distribution rights still belonged to United Artists. The studio was on the market, so Weinstein's attempts to buy those rights were unsuccessful. Weinstein asked Jackson to press on with adapting The Lord of the Rings. New Line Cinema eventually produced The Lord of the Rings, and their rights to film The Hobbit were set to expire in 2010. In September 2006, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, owner of UA, expressed interest in teaming up with New Line and Jackson to make the prequel.
In March 2005, Jackson launched a lawsuit against New Line, claiming he had lost revenue from merchandising, video, and computer games releases associated with The Fellowship of The Ring. Jackson felt the lawsuit was minor, and that New Line would still let him make the film. New Line co-founder Robert Shaye was annoyed with the lawsuit and said in January 2007 that Jackson would never again direct a film for New Line, accusing him of being greedy. MGM boss Harry Sloan halted development, as he wanted Jackson to be involved. By August, after a string of flops, Shaye was trying to repair his relationship with the director. He said, "I really respect and admire Peter and would love for him to be creatively involved in some way in The Hobbit." The following month, New Line was fined $125,000 for failing to provide requested accounting documents.
On December 18 2007, it was announced that Jackson would be executive producer of The Hobbit and its sequel. New Line and MGM will co-finance the film, and the latter studio will distribute the films outside North America – New Line's first ever such deal with another major studio. Each film is budgeted at an estimated US$150 million, which compares to the US$94 million budget for each of the films in Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. After completion of the merger of New Line Cinema with Warner Bros. in February 2008, the films were announced as scheduled for release in December 2011 and 2012. Producer Mark Ordesky will return to supervise the prequels. Jackson explained he chose not to direct because it would have been unsatisfying to compete with his previous films.
Guillermo del Toro has said he was a fan of Jackson's trilogy and had discussed directing a Halo film with him in 2005. Though that project stalled, they kept in contact. In a 2006 interview Del Toro was quoted saying "I don't like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits, I hate all that stuff". After he signed on to direct in April 2008, Del Toro posted on TheOneRing.net forums that he had been enchanted by The Hobbit as a child, but found that Tolkien's other books "contained geography and genealogy too complex for my prepubescent brain". In taking the job of director, Del Toro was now "reading like a madman to catch up with a whole new land, a continent of sorts – a cosmology created by brilliant philologist turned Shaman". The director also posted that his appreciation of Tolkien was enhanced by his knowledge of the fantasy genre and the folklore research he had undertaken while making his own fantasy films.

Wow,2 films,for one of the shorter books.

I interpret The Hobbit as being set in a "world that is slightly more golden at the beginning, a very innocent environment" and the film would need to "take you from a time of more purity to a darker reality throughout the film, but in a manner in the spirit of the book".

MGM expressed interest in a second film in 2006, set between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Jackson concurred, stating "one of the drawbacks of The Hobbit is that it's relatively lightweight compared to Lord of the Rings... There [are] a lot of sections in which a character like Gandalf disappears for a while. From memory – I mean, I haven't read it for a while now – but I think he references going off to meet with the White Council, who are actually characters like Galadriel and Saruman and people that we see in Lord of the Rings. He mysteriously vanishes for a while and then comes back, but we don't really know what goes on." Jackson was also interested in showing Gollum's journey to Mordor and Aragorn setting a watch on the Shire.