By Kofi Outlaw

Bilbo Baggins may be back on track. Say that three times fast.

The long-standing feud of words and lawsuits between THE LORD OF THE RINGS director Peter Jackson, and New Line Cinema co-chairman Robert Shaye, had almost killed all hopes of ever seeing LOTR prequel, THE HOBBIT, reach theaters. However, as is often the case where billion-dollar franchises are in concerned, cooler heads are beginning to prevail.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Jackson and New Line have re-opened the lines of communication, taking meetings and even beginning some preliminary negotiations whose goal, sources are saying, may be to usher THE HOBBIT into theaters before the end of the decade.

“There has been a détente,” says one insider. There is now the beginning of a discourse between Peter Jackson and New Line that’s running parallel to the litigation proceedings.”

For those who don’t remember those “litigation proceedings” began in 2003, around the time The Two Towers was raking in it’s billion dollar worldwide take Cast members working on LOTR began to realize that their pockets were not seeing the same weight of coin the studio was enjoying from ticket sales, merchandising etc. Soon complaints from cast and crew were piling up, many of them threatening New Line to various degrees to give them their due. The situation reached a flashpoint that same year when Jackson launched a full audit of New Line’s books—a move that rankled Shaye, who felt that he alone had given Jackson the freedom to make the LOTR films according to the vision the director had long battled for. Though Jackson’s films had in-turn raised New Line’s status as a studio, egos got the best of a mutually beneficial union and a rift formed. Harsh words and lawsuits piled upon counter-lawsuits widened the divide over the next few years, until studio and director were at one another’s throats like two hobbits fighting for the one ring. All hope seemed lost, until an unlikely hero, Benjamin Franklin (the green guy,) set out to do what no other would: convince the feuding parities to put-aside their differences and give us THE HOBBIT movie we want to see.

Now that the ice has been broken and the first make-up kisses are seemingly being exchanged, maybe the gears will begin to turn and other matters—like adapting a screenplay for film, which has yet to be done—will be attended to.

Jackson has suggested in the past that he would separate THE HOBBIT into two films, the second one focusing on the 60-year stretch between the end of THE HOBBIT and the beginning of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING — a story J.R.R. Tolkien never even told himself. It wouldn’t be the first time Jackson has successfully taken liberty with the original text—the films’ extended take on the romance between Aragorn (Viggio Mortensen) and Arwen (Liv Tyler) was mostly drawn from the novels’ vast appendixes (quick geek fact.) In Jackson’s able hands, two ‘Hobbit’ films might only double the viewing pleasure and mean two-times the revenue for the filmmakers. With a plan that lucrative, I’m sure all grievances will be settled in no time. For what is a fight about old money when there is so much new money out there to make?