A book intended for a younger audience, definitely; whether it's going to be a movie intended for a younger audience (well, movies plr.) remains to be seen. I doubt it will be substantially different in tone from the LotR movies, because I can hardly imagine the studios wanting to mess with the moneymaking formula... but, as I said, we can't really say until it comes out.Kev wrote:Well my mistake then. But the point remains that the Hobbit is for younger folk, book and movie. Considering that it doesn't have the extended scenes of violence that LOTR has, I could definitely see Lego licensing it.
As for licensing, I think we need to remember that a lot has changed with LEGO since the LotR movies (which came out 2001-2003)--and I don't mean the colour change! Back in 2001, when the Fellowship of the Ring came out, we had Star Wars licensed sets and Harry Potter coming out. I believe we also had Galidor somewhere around then--and that flopped.
Ten years later, we've had all kinds of licensed themes, including the megalithic, such as the aforementioned Harry Potter and Star Wars, to the (relatively) obscure, such as Speed Racer and Avatar. Given the *broader* range of themes that LEGO licences these days, it doesn't seem a huge stretch to licence LotR (after all, they've done the other mega-franchises, such as Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean--and to riff off these examples, it seems possible that we might get retroactive sets for the LotR movies if we got Hobbit sets).
On the *other* hand, Lego has a lot of licensed themes in the mix, so it's hard to say if they would pick The Hobbit, specifically, to be one of the next--and, honestly, the only way to know is to wait and get an announcement.