This weekend was one of too many barbecues, too many afternoon beers and too much guilt about not blogging for all involved. Nonetheless, we were blessed with a slow news weekend EXCEPT for a big-ass online discussion with Peter Jackson (LOTR trilogy) and Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) about their collaboration on two new Hobbit films.

We spent an hour or so going over the transcript, and we have highlights, as well as a link to the whole tamale…after the cut.

Important bits:

- Del Toro on Ian Holm’s involvement: The fact that Ian Holm is SO memorable means that PJ, Fran and PB did their job right. We will utilize him in some fashion for sure but the difficulty of the role will be better assessed after we do the script (s).”

- Howard Shore will return to score the films.

- Del Toro says there are plans for Ron Pearlman, but not as the voice of Smog.

- Jackson on the film’s schedule: at this point in time the plan is to write for the rest of this year and start early conceptual designs. 2009 will be dedicated to pre-production on both movies and 2010 will be the year we shoot both films back to back. Post productin follows one film at a time with The Hobbit being released Dec 2011, and F2 release Dec 2012. That is the schedule in about as much detail as we have ourselves at the moment.

- If characters from the original trilogy appear in the scripts for The Hobbit and the second film, those parts will first be offered to the original actors.

-The second Hobbit film doesn’t have a title yet, it’s being referred to as F2, or Film 2.

- Del Toro, on the content of F2: “The idea is to find a compelling way to join THE HOBBIT and FELLOWSHIP and enhance the 5 films both visually an in their Cosmology. There’s omissions and material enough in the available, licensed material to attempt this. The agreement is, however, that the second film must be relevant and emotionally strong enough to be brought to life but that we must try and contain the HOBBIT in a single film.”

Read the whole transcript HERE!