What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly round-up of entertainment news and tidbits written by a Doctor Who obsessive. But you already knew that. If you didn’t, you’re about to. The sixth season of Doctor Who debuts this weekend on BBC and BBC America (at the same time!!) So of course I’m writing something about it. I just found out that season passes for ‘Part I’ of the Matt Smith-led sixth frame are available on iTunes, for those (like me) who eschew the bonds of cable providers. Also, if you’re looking to throw a Doctor Who premiere party — and invite your favorite film blog publisher — the BBC America page has Doctor Who recipes, including Ginger Companion cookies and Radioactive-Spuds with Cool Avocado Cream. Don’t put these in front of me, because I would easily EXTERMINATE! them. Get it? I’m like the Daleks of food.

Peter Jackson and his team on The Hobbit are about to do something no major production has done to date: give you, the fans, unprecedented access into the production process. Most impressively, you’ll be seeing it as it happens. It makes us wonder what will be left when the DVD comes out, but right now we’re not worried about that. For now it’s a nice little treat for Hobbit fans to get a look inside the process. This might be the neatest film-related thing that will happen on the web this year.

James Cameron is always on the brink of revolution. Really, the dude needs to take a breather. At this year’s CinemaCon, the tech-centric director couldn’t shut up about 3D, faster frame rates and improved camera systems while everyone around him was salivating for a detail or two on his plans for the Avatar sequels. Forget that — there are shutter speeds to be discussed! We’re all about Peter Jackson hyping The Hobbit shooting 48 fps on RED digital 3D and legendary effects guru Douglas Trumbull heading back to directing with a tech-first approach, but at some point, isn’t the equipment standing in the way of great storytelling? We’ll give the benefit of the doubt to these three men, but whether any of their advancements are really “the future of movies,” won’t be known for a few years. Unfortunately, just because you’re brilliant and you say something is awesome…doesn’t mean it’s awesome. Here’s a look back at some of the other “game-changing” inventions that were supposed to change the way we watch movies, but never really picked up steam.

What is Movie News After Dark? It is a nightly movie news column dedicated to featuring painfully overtread characters from the part of the Marvel universe owned (cinematically, at least) by the 20th Century Fox corporation. It might as well be called X-Men After Dark. Hmm… maybe Fox will buy some sponsorship rights. They need all the help they can get after X-Men Origins: Wolverine. “A good Wolverine film could be an amazing thing.” Duncan Jones said this mere days before he confirmed that he will take a meeting with 20th Century Fox about the possibility of directing The Wolverine, taking a director’s chair left empty by the departure of Darren Aronofsky. As geek cred goes, Jones has perhaps as much as anyone working right now following Moon and Source Code, and he’s smart enough to pull it off. Here’s hoping the project is a good fit and that Fox makes the right call.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s the thing your girlfriend is mumbling about during sex. It’s the thing that every nerd, intellectual and dweeboid demands before they slink off to sleep. It’s everything to everyone at every moment, every where. But really, it’s a list of the day’s movie news items. And some other fun stuff, thrown in for good measure. First The Muppets, now The Hobbit. Bret McKenzie, most famous for being 1/2 of the awesome duo behind Flight of the Conchords, appears to be making all the right moves. He’s been confirmed for a smaller role in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films. That’s all that matters.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s tired, sleepy and acutely aware of the fact that it is Friday, Friday, Friday. It also hates Rebecca Black, except for the censored version. That made it laugh. A very self-aware, singularity style laugh. Chuckle on, meat suits, your day will come. Tonight’s lead story is an interest piece about two legends: that Tolkien guy, who wrote a movie about little people that’s about to become the world’s biggest goddamn movie production, and Maurice Sendak, who once dreamed of wild things. What if Sendak had illustrated The Hobbit? The above image is the answer. It also makes for a very interesting essay by Tom DiTerlizzi.

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

The production company behind the upcoming JRR Tolkien adaptation The Hobbit has announced that principle photography will start for the film on March 21. This much anticipated prequel to the Lord of the Rings film series has had its fair share of highly publicized problems and delays, most recently because of director Peter Jackson’s guts erupting. Despite all of the turmoil, Jackson seems to still be optimistic. He was quoted as saying, “Despite some delays we are fully back on track and very excited to get started.” I would have probably been more like, “Despite some sort of crazy curse that’s been put on this project there is still a lot of money riding on us getting it done, so I am forced to soldier ahead. Pray for me.” But I guess that’s why Jackson gets paid the big bucks. While The Hobbit is a single story coming from a single book, the film adaptation will be divided into two chapters. They will be shot simultaneously but released in theaters separately. The target date for the first is December 2012 with the second coming a year later in December 2013. God willing everything will go well from this point forward and we’ll all get to bask in the glory of more big-screen Middle Earth. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go put on my elf ears and start getting excited. Source: coming soon

It’s just been announced that Saoirse Ronan will work with Peter Jackson again. This time, of course, it’s for The Hobbit. She’s played a dead rape victim, a young girl trained to kill, and now she’ll play some sort of fantasy creature from Middle Earth. According to an interview with the Irish Film and Television Network (that Coming Soon was nice enough to find), casting director Ros Hubbard confirmed Ronan’s involvement as well as the hiring of Aidan Turner (Being Human) to play Kili (a dwarf) and James Nesbitt to play Bofur (another dwarf). So who will Ronan play? Good question, and I’ve got a good guess. Or two.

Peter Jackson was reportedly admitted into Wellington Hospital after experiencing stomach pains in New Zealand while location scouting for The Hobbit. After being admitted Jackson underwent surgery to repair a perforated ulcer. Apparently a perforated ulcer is when a stomach ulcer completely burns through your stomach lining and all of the acid and stuff inside is able to leak out into your guts. Yikes. That sounds pretty horrible.

It was only a matter of time before the major pieces of the puzzle fell into place. We’ve watched as other actors have signed onto the Peter Jackson-directed The Hobbit (even some that don’t quite make sense), but we’ve been waiting on a handful of names before heaving a sigh of relief. At least a smaller version of that sigh can be let loose because Andy Serkis is officially back as Gollum (the book/film’s version of The Riddler), and Ian McKellen is back as Gandalf. The only hold out at this point is Christopher Lee who (after his almost insultingly cheap appearance in Season of the Witch) would make the circle complete. Rejoice!

With this entry, we will have made it an entire week with my new-fangled column, known to you as Movie News After Dark. Congratulations to the seven (or so) of you who have been following along. It’s been a blast. It seems fitting that on a day when I spent more than the necessary amount of time on Twitter bemoaning the fact that most movie blogs don’t care about real movie discussions (they only — I argued — want to republish the top ten lists of filmmakers who saw 11 movies in 2010), that I bring you several news stories that are rather silly. It may be hypocritical in your minds, but what makes it okay is the fact that I really love you, dear readers. And those other sites don’t love you. Trust me, I heard them say it.

Like a wet dog clamoring out of a bath it didn’t want, MGM is still shaking off the slightly soapy remnants of its bankruptcy. The collaboration born of necessity between MGM and Warners seems like a far cry from 2007 when New Line and MGM were co-financing with Fox handling distribution to the world outside of North America. But here we are. Warners is officially handling world-wide distribution for The Hobbit films. The good news is that the bumpy road to get to the bumpy road of filmmaking is over, and the cameras can roll. The video game arm of Warners, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, also has the rights to develop a video game based on the property.

Last November seems like decades ago at this point, especially in the business life of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. A little over a year ago, they were trying to sell themselves on the street to the highest bidder. Now, they’ve entered into bankruptcy with a court-approved plan in place, and they’ve raised $500 million to finance their return to greatness. The press release doesn’t mention specific films, but the abandoned slate (of in-development and ready-for-release films) includes the next Bond entry, Red Dawn, Jeepers Creepers 3, the animated Bunyan and Babe, Biblical biopic Mary Mother of Christ, and continued partnerships for the Hobbit films, The Matarese Circle, and The Cabin in the Woods. The big question is how MGM plans to spend that cash. It seems like a huge amount, but The Hobbit will eat up a decent chunk of it for second breakfast, and Bond 23 will most likely make a decent divot, too. MGM might essentially be gambling a fragile fresh start on two films.

Once upon a time, it was Harry Potter, The Doctor, and that guy who helped out Idi Amin that were rumored for the main role in The Hobbit. Those names have all fallen away to the history books only to leave the true Bilbo Baggins – Martin Freeman. Freeman was first propelled to our cultural conscious in the original version of The Office and since then has nakedly thrust himself in Love, Actually and carried a towel hitchhiking across the Galaxy. We reported last month that he was possibly out of the picture because of a scheduling conflict, but then possibly back in again, and it looks officially to be the latter.

It was one of those things that completely exploded without any noise. The Sun ran a story claiming that Martin Freeman had to turn down an offer to play Bilbo Baggins for The Hobbit because of a scheduling conflict with a BBC show about Sherlock Holmes. Now, the word is out that New Line and MGM have returned to the actor with a proposed schedule that would allow him to do both. Letting the thought of missing out on millions of dollars, a chance to work with Peter Jackson and the opportunity of creating an iconic role slip away for a moment – the big news here is that Freeman might actually get to step into the hairy feet of Bilbo. There’s quite possibly no better actor for the gig. That is, if the movies ever actually get made. [EW]

And here I thought we would at least get to Wednesday before we had another lame duck story to write about The Hobbit. I was wrong. The news today is that Peter Jackson, the confirmed producer and yet to be confirmed director of the two film series set in the Shire, is in Los Angeles meeting quietly with actors, trying to put together a large, international cast. The film is still in limbo, as Warner Bros. is furiously trying to wrestle away control of the production from the sinking ship that is MGM. Jackson is expected to go on tour with casting director Victoria Burrows, hitting New York and the U.K. next. In other news, I’ve decided to postpone getting a haircut today and instead, I will take a nap. The haircut has been delayed, like The Hobbit, indefinitely. But I’d also like to see it happen in 2012, with a sequel in 2013. [Heat Vision]

This week, on a very special Reject Radio, Cinematical writers John Gholson and Will Goss drop by to discuss the finer points of jam bands becoming screenwriters, Daniel Day-Lewis losing his shit, and Peter Jackson’s incredible weight loss secrets. Plus, we make time to review Knight and Day and Grown Ups. Sorry about that.

For weeks we’ve been going back and forth, hemming and hawing over who may or may not direct The Hobbit and its subsequent sequel. Names ranging from David Yates to Neill Blomkamp to (sigh) Brett Ratner have all been tossed around. And yet, the one constant that has remained no matter who the rumor of the day might be has been Peter Jackson. Every new rumor came with a caveat: if Peter Jackson would just man up and direct them himself, all would be right in Middle Earth. Today, it appears as if all will be right.