The Hobbit: still on course for 2011?

It's been a bumpy week in The Hobbit movie news, what with Peter Jackson's confirmation that the two planned films hadn't formally been greenlit yet, and then the separate revelation that they might get bumped back a year as well. Could the world as we know it be coming to an end, we wondered?

Fortunately, Peter Jackson has stepped back in to offer some assurances. Talking to Collider.com, Jackson said:

"Nothing has changed as far as I am concerned. Somebody wrote something on the Internet and a lot of nonsense happened. You don't want to believe everything you read on the Internet. We were due to deliver the scripts and be shooting sometime around April and now I think I said in an interview we were shooting in June. And somehow people are now saying the film is delayed.

As far as I am aware, they are not delayed at all. I am not even sure when we are going to start shooting...we are delivering the scripts just after Christmas they'll be finished and we'll be shooting as soon as we possibly can. But you need a certain amount of time to finish the pre-production."

Jackson went on to confirm to the site that December 2011 was very much still the planned release date for the first of the two films.

Here's the Collider piece.