You may have heard — and if you hadn’t, you would have heard eventually — that Peter Jackson is in negotiations to direct the two-part The Hobbit prequel, which he was originally going to produce but not direct. If so, he’ll join a longish line of directors who tried to bow out of sequels/prequels only to be pulled back in when the studio couldn’t get someone else (in this case Guillermo Del Toro quit). One famous example, on a more exalted level, is Akira Kurosawa, who prepared the script for a sequel to his hit Yojimbo — his biggest box-office hit after a long line of critical successes — indending to give it to his assistant, Hiromichi Horikawa. Instead the studio talked him into doing the film himself.

Back to Peter Jackson, though, if he wants to make The Hobbit interesting, the only way I can think of is to do it as a musical. Fortunately a Mr. Nimoy and his associates have already made a start on an appropriate score.