It was just Monday when we learned here that The Hobbit won’t start shooting as soon we’d thought. Peter Jackson announced that they won’t start work on it till the summer of 2010. That’s bad enough, but now things may be even worse. Get ready to wait. And wait. And wait.

According to The Wrap that later shooting date may mean that the first of Jackson and Del Toro’s two Hobbit movies won’t be released until the end of 2012. There’s some hope that they might get it out in 2011, but odds are we have a three year wait on our hands before seeing more from the world of Middle Earth.

It may seem like just yesterday that we all piled into a theater for our first look at Fellowship of the Ring, but if The Hobbit isn’t released until 2012 it will have been more than eleven years since the release of the first Lord of the Rings movie and nearly a decade since the last time LOTR was in theaters. Fans aren’t normally known for their patience but waiting becoming a part-time hobby for anyone interested in more Middle Earth.