Lord of the Rings Prequel?

[TheGreatSatan]

The Hobbit (http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.reuters.com/legal-settlement-clears-way-quothobbitquot-movie-reuters) may be getting made

[Kayin]

Already announced, Guillermo Del Toro is directing, it's a two-parter, and many of the same cast from LOTR, as well as the Weta workshop, will be reprising.

[XcOM]

i heard about this ages ago, there was an argument because peter jackson wanted to direct it, but as he was working on other stuff at the time they were all:

"Well we need you now or we will find someone else"

but peter jackson had the rites to the tolkien books works, so they would either need to make that null and void some how, or get the rites from him, so i assuming they have done the latter

Edit:

It seems they have permission from peter jackson as he is one of the screen writers, it appears this film got delayed time and time again because of law suits between the tolkien estate and WB/Newline, christopher tolkien claimed that that tolkien estate was still awaiting for there 7.9% of what the three films took ($6.5 Billion if you were wondering) so that works out at about $250 million, they finally setteled the suit then peter jackson was awaiting payment for the trilogy also, so he started a suit against newline, they finally paid up, so he is now the producer and screen writer for the hobbit, its soo useful when you have the internet