This is a bit of a dog week for new releases -- The Tourist looks atrocious, the new Narnia flick is middling and hardly anybody is going to go see The King's Speech no matter how good critics say it is -- so rather than waste your time on those I'm going to waste your time by engaging in a bit of idle speculation on one of my formative childhood influences.

See, I'm a geek. Specifically, I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek. And the single largest reason for that is that at some point in my public school career, I believe it was around Grade 4, I discovered JRR Tolkien and The Hobbit.  And a moderate obsession was born. See, I've not only read The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings up into double figures but The Silmarillion isn't much far behind in terms of total reads and I've dipped into pretty much all of Tolkein's extensive histories of Middle Earth at some point or another. I kind of love this world.

To put it mildly, Peter Jackson's films of the Lord epics were a moderate step up from the previous Ralph Bakshi attempt at bringing Middle Earth to the screen. Jackson pretty much nailed it the first time out, which is a great part of why watching the arduous journey required to bring The Hobbit to the screen has been so painful.

First problem, the rights were split between two companies who couldn't seem to make nice and play happily together in the same sandbox. New Line (who backed LotR) and MGM held the book rights 50/50. Pre-LotR neither had any particular faith that it could be made into a successful movie. Post-LotR both had dollar signs dancing through their dreams and neither wanted to share. This took literally years to work out.

And then, for a brief period, things looked good. Peter Jackson was on board to write and produce while Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo Del Toro was signed up to direct. The odd quirk here being that, for some reason, despite Jackson being able to contain each of the much longer and more complex Lord books in a single film each they were planning to make two films out of The Hobbit and were never really specific about how they planned to fill the run time. Speculation that Tolkien's story would fill one film while the other would be original material designed as a link to Lord began to bubble up with no real discouragement from Jackson et al. Cue purist concern.

And then MGM went into the shitter. The company that held half of the rights fell prey to years of mismanagement and horrible decisions, decisions so bad that even the James Bond franchise hadn't been able to keep it away from a billion dollar debt. They tried to sell the company. Couldn't do it. So all operations were suspended while they hunted for a financial savior. And The Hobbit -- along with every other MGM project -- waited. And waited. And waited. Until Del Toro said, "Fuck it, I've got other projects I want to make, I'm out of here." And off he went. So long, fantastic director. There were brief rumblings that the directing gig would fall to Sam Raimi but ultimately it ended up where people thought it would, back in the lap of Peter Jackson.

So. Director in place again. And MGM managed to get their act together enough to finally green light the damn picture. All good, right? Nope. Cue labor disruption!  With prodding from an Australian actors' union labor forces in New Zealand - where Jackson is based and LotR was shot - labour organizations in New Zealand decided to make The Hobbit into a test case and demand improved working conditions. US-based Screen Actors Guild and several other unions got involved, with SAG issuing a Do Not Work order to all of its members until the Kiwi concerns were met. Which meant Jackson couldn't possibly cast any recognizable names in the film. Slight problem, that. Cue mass public protests, industry panic and a remarkable large-scale fuck-up that ended with the unionists in full-on retreat and the New Zealand government throwing a big bag of money at the producers' feet and changing local labor laws -- a move that took less than a week -- to suit Hollywood tastes in an effort to keep the production there. It worked, but the events left a very sour taste in many mouths.

But, finally, things are moving ahead, which brings me to the ultimate point. Jackson has started announcing cast and included among them are Cate Blanchett and Orlando Bloom, reprising their roles as the elves Galadriel and Legolas. And while continuity is cool and all, there's one slight problem. Neither Galadriel nor Legolas are actually in The Hobbit. Both were characters introduced to Middle Earth in The Lord Of The Rings. So what's going on?

Nobody's saying openly but I'm willing to wager a decent chunk of money that Jackson has just tipped his hand as to the content of The Hobbit Part Two, or whatever it ends up being called. Because while Legolas doesn't appear in The Hobbit his father does and there's a major story referred to there that has never been told. Still with me? Here's what I think is coming.

Movie One: This will be The Hobbit essentially as written. Which means we get the story of Bilbo being introduced to a band of treasure-hunting dwarves by the wizard Gandalf who then trucks off to join his wizard buddies and deal with the mysterious Necromancer who has set up shop on the edge of Mirkwood. Bilbo and the dwarves beat a dragon, win lots of gold and fame and Bilbo discovers the One Ring and meets the weird creature Gollum. Gollum, it should be noted, ends the book held captive by the elven king in Mirkwood, which would be the second Mirkwood reference so far.

And here's the third: The king of Mirkwood is Legolas' father, which makes it pretty clear to me that The Hobbit Part Two is going to be the story of what happened in Mirkwood while Bilbo et al were dealing with the dragon. Which means lots of elves. And lots of wizards. And, incidentally, the Necromancer turns out to be Sauron who moves along to what becomes his base for Lord of the Rings after being driven out of the forest. Which makes this a pretty ideal bridge story to connect the Hobbit films to the LotR films for people who aren't familiar with the source material.

From a business perspective it's a smart move. And if well executed it could be a really good movie. But from a geek perspective? Well... Middle Earth is kind of sacred ground. And Tolkien was an obsessive perfectionist who continually returned to his work, retouching and tweaking it and never quite arriving at a final state on any of it. So I kind of doubt the idea of anyone else writing a major piece of Middle Earth history would sit well with him. And I kind of agree with him. I doubt that'll stop me from seeing the movie, but I'm probably going to feel a little dirty.