Ditto. The Hobbit as a book was "OK" but if it was all Tolkien ever wrote, you'd probably never have heard of him. The films were overpadded and filled with the worst of the current excess of movie CGI action sequences. Like you, I never bothered with the third.
Tolkien did, however, create a very detailed and very rich world. There's plenty of backdrop there on which to write new stories whether or not they hew to anything specific that's already been written in that universe. On the other hand, there are plenty of rich worlds that authors have built over time. And most of them don't carry the baggage and weight of expectations that anything associated with Tolkien inevitably would.
ADDED: As noted elsewhere, the rights to other Tolkien works would have to be obtained.
Haha yes, those were definitely awful. I only saw the first one and caught a little of the last one on a plane.
What I meant is I'm not tired of the Tolkien universe and would welcome more. That's not to say I enjoyed the hobbit series whatsoever. For instance, I'd love to see another director try their hand at a Hobbit series on television. At least then I could pretend the Jackson-led Hobbit series didn't exist.
For what it's worth, there are some fan cuts of the Hobbit movies that remove all the superfluous stuff and make it much closer to the book. Worth looking up.
It's really amazing that some amateurs can cut 10+ hours of film, and something like half a billion dollars worth of production costs down to three hours, with free video editing software, and that cutjob is the superior incarnation. Interesting times we live in.
I don't know - that was pretty much my reaction to the Hobbit movies - which were pretty dreadful. I didn't even bother seeing the 3rd one.