If you read the news two weeks ago that Spyglass Entertainment may bail out MGM from its financial troubles and immediately hoped it meant good things for The Hobbit, you're not alone. Peter Jackson, who is patiently waiting for the studio to sort itself so he can swoop in and direct the two-part prequel he never really wanted to make, told the New Zealand site Stuff that progress was being made toward MGM being a functional company again:

But he said yesterday that Warner Bros was "making progress untangling the MGM situation, so we should have certainty with The Hobbit sometime soon".

Who knows what "certainty with The Hobbit" might actually mean-- for all we know Jackson could bail at the last minute and assign directing duties to, I dunno, Sean Astin. As the MGM financial woes have become more public we've just been getting more variations of Jackson's usual "nothing is official" statements about The Hobbit. Does this mean we should actually have hope, or is this just another way of Jackson saying "Quit asking, nothing is figured out yet." Keep those fingers crossed for positive news, but I'm not holding out hope that anything has actually changed. MGM seems to be a giant that nobody yet has been able to untangle.