The developers of Lego games, Traveller's Tales, spent $1 million on a pitch for a Hobbit video game that never came to be. Studio co-founder Jon Burton revealed this in a new video for his YouTube page, GameHut, and he speaks very freely and openly about the project and how it came to be (and not be).
In 2008, Warner Bros. announced plans to make two Hobbit movies, with Guillermo del Toro attached to direct. Burton wanted to make an Xbox 360/PS3 video game tie-in for the movie, but not a Lego game like his studio had become known for.
Burton and his team got the greenlight to pitch to del Toro and Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, and the studio worked for six months to create a demo to pitch in February 2009. Burton said it is his belief that a video game tie-in for a movie should try to replicate the movie as closely as possible so it feels like you're "living" the film. With the movie not out yet, Burton's team used Jackson's The Lord of the Rings as a template, recreating key moments from the movies.
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