Okay, so The Hobbit is clearly a victim of MGM’s financial woes and likely won’t be seen until 2012, at the earliest. However, the film’s effects supervisor, Richard Taylor, is still in good spirits and told MTV the effort is actually moving along rather well.

At the top of the interview Taylor explained, “I was in a big meeting about how to make the new designs of armor for the new film. That's always good fun.” Progress is currently being made; that’s a good sign! Taylor got into more meaty details when talking about the prominent presence of the dwarves in The Hobbit. "The lovely thing about The Hobbit is that the race of the dwarves comes to the forefront in the story, and [we'll depict] the uniqueness of the collection of the dwarves.”

Our only in-depth experience with a Dwarf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy is with Gimli, but in The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins is buddy-buddy with a whole team of them. "Gimli had an incredible presence, of course," Taylor explained. "But he was only one character. And it's fantastic to think that we're going to be able to develop the dwarves to such a higher degree... the richness of their culture. The fact that through so many different dwarfs, you'll get to appreciate their cultural differences, where they come from, them as a people."

After all the Dwarf chat, Taylor provided a brief update concerning where the crew is in the filmmaking process. "We haven't actually started fully on pre-production yet — we're still in the design phase — but it's a wonderful opportunity to work with a unique director in [director] Guillermo [del Toro] and continue to work with Peter [Jackson] as the producer, who is so heavily involved." And what about those reported delays? They’re practically going unnoticed by Taylor. He’s looking at the holdups simply as more time to prepare properly. "It's been an unrushed period of pre-pre-[production], and that's been a pleasure as everyone gets back into the right headspace." He added, "As far as schedules go, you'd need to talk to someone else about that. But from our own perspective, we're enjoying this early phase as it's ticking along."

While some Hobbit fanatics are plagued with pessimism thanks to the studio’s clogged cash flow, it’s nice to hear that someone’s looking on the bright side. We may have to wait quite a while to return to Middle Earth, but we’ll certainly get there and, based on what Taylor had to say, it’ll be worth the wait.