TheOneRing.net has alerted us to “rumors” concerning a delay in the release of The Hobbit flooding the Internet. Actually it all seems to be one rumor, endlessly reprinted or paraphrased. So far, I don’t see any reason whatsoever to believe it.

Here the rumor is in its entirety, from the Economic Times:

‘Lord Of The Rings’ prequel ‘The Hobbit’ has been postponed until 2012.

It was announced that the new film, which is based on JRR Tolkien’s novel, would be directed by Guillermo Del Toro.

Oscar winner Peter Jackson is producing the project, and is also penning the screenplay with Del Toro, reports Contactmusic.

Sir Ian McKellen will be reprising his role of Gandalf, and Andy Serkis is expected to play Gollum once again.

The Shooting of ‘The Hobbit’, which was planned to begin in New Zealand this winter, has been postponed until 2010 – with the release day pushed back to 2012.

However the cause for the delay is unknown.

I can’t find a by-line or a source on this. No one who actually involved in the production is quoted. No one is quoted, full stop.

To me, the rumor makes no sense. “Shooting” for The Hobbit was never announced to begin “this winter.” Let me quote from what Peter said way back in May during the Peter and Guillermo interview:

At this point in time the plan is to write for the rest of this year and start early conceptual designs. 2009 will be dedicated to pre-production on both movies and 2010 will be the year we shoot both films back to back. Post production follows one film at a time, with The Hobbit being released Dec 2011, and the F[ilm]2 release Dec 2012.

That’s a fairly reasonable schedule for two films, if you consider that the three films of the LOTR trilogy took 18 months to shoot.

I have noticed during the period in which endless speculation has gone on about these films that a lot of people, even reporters who cover entertainment news, don’t know the difference between pre-production, principal photography, and post-production. That may be the source of the rumor.

People don’t just write scripts and leap straight into production, unless they’re someone like Mike Leigh, who bases his script on the casts’ improvisations and doesn’t need a whole lot of lead time. But for a big Hollywood film, pre-production is a long process, involving set, costume, and prop design and the building of those sets, costumes, and props. (We know that Peter’s team doesn’t skimp on time for this process.) These days it entails making the pre-visualization or pre-viz, a simple computer-generated animation of the film. It involves finding locations, casting, hiring the crew, planning the production schedule, and all sorts of complicated things that take time. Quite plausibly, all of 2009.

The principal photography is pretty much what it sounds like, the filming of all those elements that have been planned and built in preparation for it. Post-production is the editing, sound mixing, color grading, shooting of pick-ups (extra footage to fill in gaps or botched footage), post-dubbing of dialogue, and so on.

Of course, it’s quite possible that there is or will be some sort of delay. Back in 1998, New Line announced that LOTR would come out across a single year: Christmas, Summer, Christmas. That schedule didn’t take into account how big a project that was. It’s a miracle that it was ready in time to come out across two years. Now we’re in a situation where legal difficulties or the international financial meltdown could affect even such a potentially success project as this one.

The fact that the film is not shooting in 2009, though, is irrelevant. It was never meant to. I’ll believe that the release date has been set back if and when we get official word on that from New Line or Peter or Guillermo.

Maybe the person who started the rumor got this mixed up with some other wizard movie–something about a half-blood prince.

[Update, Dec 19: TORN now reports that Guillermo has been in touch with them to confirm that the rumor is not true. I do wish reporters would get their facts straight before putting out this sort of nonsense. Remember the rumor that the Tolkien Trust lawsuit meant that Christopher Tolkien was personally trying to stop the Hobbit production. Anyway, I hope this post gives information that will be helpful in understanding the stages of the filmmaking and why everything takes so darned long.]