SPOILERS: Peter Jackson Talks 'The Hobbit,' Oscars

It's no secret that Lord of the Rings and the new The Hobbit director, Peter Jackson, 51, likes to talk about his new film in the second J.R.R. Tolkien-based movie franchise he's undertaken —The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, starring Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Hugo Weaving, Andy Serkis and Cate Blanchett — much to the delight of fans who love spoilers.

While Jackson acknowledged the Oscar expectations that three previous Best Picture nominations for each of his Lord of the Rings installments have established, he also reveals that The Hobbit, which is more squarely targeted toward a younger audience, may not be the film to sweep awards season this time around.

"Well it depends. I think we’ve got great possibilities in the below the line categories," Jackson told Entertainment Weekly, referring to awards in technical categories like visual effects, sound, makeup and cinematography. "Above the line, I don’t think so much. I wish it was a year where we could celebrate Ian McKellen as supporting actor, or Martin Freeman — or Andy Serkis, for that matter — as a supporting actor. The acting awards seem to elude us, at least for these types of films. I don’t know why."

While loftier Oscars may sit just out of reach, Jackson feels confident about The Hobbit — enough that he opened himself and his actors up to have a little fun with it. "The comedy was one of the joys of this movie," he told the magazine. "It allowed us to let our hair down a little bit. The Lord of the Rings was very apocalyptic, end-of-world heavy, which was appropriate to the book Tolkien wrote. But we wanted this to be appropriate too. The Hobbit is almost written like as though a chapter would be the nice size for a parent to read to children at night before bed. It’s very episodic, by chapter. We wanted the movie to reflect a little of that."

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, hits theaters on December 14.

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