Peter Jackson has posted twice on his Facebook page. After Production Diary #3, he had this to say to those hoping for New Line to put on some sort of presentation about The Hobbit at this year’s Comic-Con:

Good news and bad news today. Bad news is that we won’t be doing any Hobbit presentation at Comic Con in San Diego this year. New Line and Warner Bros were very happy to support a presentation, but I declined, simply because I felt it was too early. There’s so much more of the films still to shoot. I just wanted to get that out there, because I’ve seen various references to the possibility of something Hobbity at Comic Con. Hate to disappoint anyone. But something tells me we will be there in force next year.

At least that gives those of us who might hope to go next year plenty of time to plan!

The new post also says that Peter has begun work on the second twenty-questions answers and hopes to post them soon.

In what has become an annual event, TheOneRing.net will be doing a panel at Comic-Con, catching fans up on the latest news and rumors concerning The Hobbit production. They plan to stream the panel live tomorrow, Thursday, July 21, at 10 am Pacific time, or 1 pm on the East Coast. After that: “Then, throughout the rest of the weekend, TORn staffers will be showing up on the stream live with special guests, other panels, interviews and more!”

The link to the live feed is in the story I’ve linked above.

I participated in one of these panels myself back in 2008. (See here for some description and photos, including Richard Taylor and John Howe.) I’ve regretted not being able to go back since that one experience. Maybe next year! The panel and the event as a whole were great fun.

Slash Film has posted several photos of elaborate Lego recreations of scenes from the LOTR film. These were done collaboratively and won the “Best Group Layout” award at Brickworld 2011.

(Thanks to Jon and Mel Walsh for the link!)

I’m still very fond of the Brick Tales scenes based on the book rather than the film. These are based on the book rather than the film, and though they don’t have the same epic scale made possible by teamwork, they are quite charming and clever.

Asylum has put up a video and poll on the subject of which wizard tale is better, LOTR or Harry Potter. A roughly three-minute video shows fans giving opinions and sometimes arguing with each other, usually in a civilized way, about the topic. Judging by the video, one would get the impression that the two series run neck-and-neck. The poll, however, tells a different tale, with 73.5% of the votes going to LOTR. That’s only 185 votes, though, so things could change. The contest seems intended to be between Rowling’s and Tolkien’s books, though clearly some fans are thinking of the films when they respond.

A design student names JT Fridsma has created a poster that lays out the movements of the members of the Fellowship minute-by-minute across the entirety of Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy. Actually, this sort of thing has been done before, but not nearly so beautifully. The geeks at Co.Design enthuse about it here. Click on the poster for a larger view.

Or go to Fridsma’s own site, where he has posted ten photos of the poster, including close views of various parts. He says he’s hoping to sell copies of the poster. You can email him from his page about getting one for yourself. It’s gorgeous enough that even someone who’s not a fan of the film would find it worth looking at for its own sake.

[Thanks to Stew Fyfe for alerting me to this!]

Facebook seems to be the studios’ choice for communicating with the fans. Now “The Lord of the Rings (Official Page)” offers the following:

Ever wonder how the design & effects came together in The Lord of the Rings trilogy? Well, now you can ask the experts. Alan Lee & John Howe Illustrators & Conceptual Artists for The Lord of the Rings trilogy as well as Richard Taylor, Design and Effects Supervisor for The Lord of the Rings trilogy will be answering YOUR Facebook fan questions! Submit questions below & be sure to let us know who it’s for.

A lot of the questions so far submitted seem to be about The Hobbit, which isn’t part of what’s being offered. I’d suggest asking quite specific LOTR-related questions if you want to have a good chance of getting a response.

Peter Jackson has just posted again on his Facebook page. He recalls the history-making 20-questions session that he and Harry Knowles ran on Ain’t It Cool News way back in August of 1998. Peter answered questions about his plans for The Lord of the Rings. (See The Frodo Franchise, p. 151.)

Now he wants to do the same thing for The Hobbit, but this time the venue will be Facebook. Peter invites questions from fans:

So let’s get into it … if there’s anything you’d like to know about the movies we’re making, please send me questions (on this page) and we’ll start answering 20 of them. Who knows – if we have fun, why stop at 20?

Let’s get it underway. Over to you …

The website Middle-earth News interviewed Jack Machiela back on March 8, but I just caught up with it. Jack lives in Wellington, works as a guide for Wellington Rover Tours, and runs the informative Noldor Blog. (I wrote about Wellington Rover Tours for Chapter 10 of The Frodo Franchise, having interviewed its founder, Jason Bragg.)

Jack talks about celebrities he has met around Wellington, his favorite Rings locations, and where to get a good cup of coffee or a sandwich in the area.

Ian McKellen has started a blog in which he will report on his activities while playing Gandalf in The Hobbit. The blog home page is here, its first entry (one we’re already familiar with, confirming he would indeed be Gandalf again) here, and a new one about arriving in New Zealand here.

Fans who kept close track of doings during the making of The Lord of the Rings will also be familiar with the online journals Ian posted then: The Grey Book and The White Book. (Blogs didn’t exist in those days, but now the home pages of these “books” lists each as a “journal/blog.”) If you somehow missed those or just want a little bit of great nostalgic reading, you should check them out. Plenty of illustrations, and there are more LOTR-related photos here, here, here, and here. If you still want more, checkout the lengthy question and answer section on LOTR, where Ian replied to queries sent in by fans. (And yes, he did answer them himself!) Note that the index is in reverse chronological order.

For more on the background of Ian’s website, see Chapter 5 of The Frodo Franchise book. In researching that section, I was lucky enough to interview both Ian and his webmaster, Keith Stern.

I would imagine that most readers of this blog already have heard this news, but just in case …

Today TheOneRing.net announced that they’re instituting a weekly five-minute video summing up the latest Hobbit-related news. The first one is up already. You can also subscribe to the series on YouTube.