Award-winning New Zealand director Peter Jackson has said he’s considering a novel adaptation of his popular film trilogy The Hobbit.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first film in the series, was released late last year to widespread popularity, grossing more than $1,000,000,000 worldwide at the box office. That success has inspired Jackson – who was reportedly “captivated” by his story – to make it available in other mediums.

“Fran and I were talking about it when we were writing the screenplay together” said Jackson, referring to co-producer Fran Walsh. “And there were several points where we just thought to ourselves ‘Wow, I really feel like this could be a book.’”

Jackson says he’s taking the project very seriously, and revealed that he’d already been in talks with several popular authors, including J.K Rowling, Lee Child, Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer.

“All of those people are very well known for writing books” said Jackson. “So I figured if we put them together, and asked them all to write for it, we’d have a really good book on our hands.”

“We thought it’d be sort of a children’s novel, but with a considerable amount of adult appeal” he said. “We just want to reach out to as many people as possible, so that they too can share in this heartwarming tale. But we also want the novel to appeal to those who have already seen the films, but until now haven’t had the chance to relive the adventure in book form.”

The news comes as Jackson is considering extending his film trilogy to six installments after he felt that the part where Bilbo finds the Arkenstone could be a movie in and of itself.