RINGS LEADERS TELL JACKSON TO "HOBBIT"

Bad news Baginses - hairy film wizard Peter Jackson will not be involved in New Line Cinema's Lord of the Rings "prequel", The Hobbit.

The man who, against all odds, made three of the geekiest things cool (they be elves, orcs and New Zealand), is embroiled in a major money wrangle with New Line.

But while the multimillionaire Jackson battles it out with multimillionaire movie moguls at New Line, its us - the movie-going public - who'll be hit hardest. I've suffered at the hands of prequels before and I fear history may be repeating itself just once more.