SCREENRANT.COM - During a interview promoting The Lovely Bones DVD. What Jackson said may disappoint but necessarily surprise those who have been closely followings The Hobbit news.

Before we get to the quotes, the gist of what Jackson reveals is that even though the second script is now complete and has been handed into the studio, the film has not yet been officially greenlit by the studio. Here’s what Jackson said:

“It’s not really been delayed, because we’ve never announced the date. I mean it’s sort of interesting because the studio [MGM] has never greenlit ‘The Hobbit,’ so therefore ‘The Hobbit’ has never been officially announced as a “go” project, nor have we ever announced a date.”

“We’ve just delivered the script. Literally last week, we delivered the second of the two screenplays — the first draft. So the studio’s got both scripts now, which is a milestone; and if anything was holding it up, it was us doing the screenplays, because we’d just been writing as fast as we can, but it took us this long to get them finished. So we take whatever responsibility there is for the speed. And we’re now in the process of budgeting the films, and then hopefully we’ll get to a budget the studio [people] are happy with, and they’ll greenlight the movies and we’ll announce the shooting dates. I’d be pretty optimistic that we’ll be shooting before the end of the year. I would imagine October, November, we’d be shooting by. I’m NOT announcing it, though.”

Full story after the jump.

UPDATE: Hobbit’s Release date pushed to December 2013!

UPDATE 2: Guillermo Del Toro departs “The Hobbit”