A Prediction

Now that New Line has dropped Peter Jackson as director of The Hobbit, in what will probably go down as the most boneheaded move in the history of Hollywood boneheadedness, I predict the following things about the new Hobbit movie:

• They will move the shooting location to Vancouver and rebuild Hobbiton so that it looks nothing like the Hobbiton in Jackson's Lord of the Rings.
• The new director will go out of his or her way to distinguish The Hobbit in every possible way from both Jackson's and Tolkien's work.
• They'll get someone younger and less gay to play Gandalf.
• They'll hire the writers of the original Dungeons and Dragons movie to adapt the script from the Bass and Rankin screenplay.
• They'll hire Glenn Yarbrough to sing the theme song, which will be written by Hootie of Hootie and the Blowfish.
• They'll add a love interest for Bilbo. Gweneth Paltow will get the part, because hobbits are notoriously svelte. And blonde. She'll go on the journey, taking the place of Bombur in the story.
• There will only be six dwarves because thirteen is just too many for the audience to keep track of.
• They'll cut the trolls scene, and change the story so that Sting is a mathom sword that Bilbo has lying around the hole.
• They'll cut the scene with Beorn, and the scene with the spiders.
• They'll add an adventure wherein Bilbo and Gandalf rescue Ms. Paltrow from the Necromancer and return in time to save the dwarves from the Elf King.
• Bilbo will kill Smaug with Sting and the movie will end with Thorin crowned King Under the Mountain because the Battle of Five Armies is just too confusing and anticlimatic for American audiences.
• The movie will be a huge flop, bankrupting New Line, thus convincing Hollywood once again that fantasy movies are a bad investment. Of course, you and I know that it's bad fantasy movies that don't make money, but who are we to question people who are so wise as to drop Peter Jackson from the production of The Hobbit?