Some potentially good news in regards to Peter Jackson‘s constantly complicated endeavor to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien‘s original tale of The Hobbit into a two-part feature film. The good news is also followed by a bit of bad news, naturally.

There’s been endless news and discussions when it comes to The Hobbit, and it’s felt like the movie has been coming for a decade now. The truth is that the movie itself never even got the greenlight from studios, though it was universally expected to be happening one way or another — the greenlight was just a formal detail. Then came the departure of director Guillermo del Toro and all of the financial woes of MGM, who were set to go dutch with Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema on the project, bringing to surface the very real chance that this movie simply would never happen.

Now, according to several sources close to the many parties involved, an official greenlight on the project could come in the next few days with Peter Jackson still set to direct. Considering how things have gone, this could very well change in the blink of an eye and tomorrow we’ll be hearing the movie has been scrapped. But for today, it’s an exciting little beam of hope for those of us twitching for more hobbit adventure. It looks like we’ll see soon enough. The hopes now are to start filming these two movies together by January for release at the end of 2012 and 2013.

Onto the bad news, which, looking at how crazy things have gone with this movie, isn’t all that bad. It’s just yet another speed bump. It’s being reported that a significant fire broke out at Jackson’s New Zealand warehouse where he does a lot of miniatures work and shooting. Apparently it took about 50 firefighters three hours to put everything out. It’s unclear how much damage was done exactly, but it shouldn’t be un-fixable.

If the expected and hoped for greenlight does indeed come for The Hobbit this week, the budget for the two films is already shaping up to be titanic. Warner Bros. and MGM have apparently already spent $45 million on various things from scripts to casting meetings and some special effects work to prepare. As minuscule as it sounds, people can say this movie is happening or this director is in or out all they want, but knowing almost $50 million has already been spent indicates much more intent than words. This number is of course dwarfed by the overall expected price tag, which is hovering at about $500 million for both movies. So much for those hopes of a bridge movie, eh?

[Sources: The LA Times, Deadline]