The other big thing was the announcement that they're no longer splitting it into two movies. They are now making a trilogy out of it. That's right, they're making three movies out of the one book. The big question now is how they're pulling it off.
Now, when they first announced that they were going to adapting The Hobbit, way back when Guillermo Del Toro was directing, they said that the plan was for two movies: the first one would be an adaptation of The Hobbit, and for the second film, they were going to pour through all of JRR Tolkien's appendicies and texts on the history of Middle Earth and create a second film that would fill the gap between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Then Del Toro left the project, Peter Jackson got back on board, and Jackson said, "Nope, forget that. We're going to cut The Hobbit in half and make two movies."
So the popular rumor right now is that Jackson still desires to make that "bridge the gap" film, and tried to incorporate a lot of it as subplots. And now, in the editing booth, he's decided to make his "bridge the gap" film into a full, third movie.
That, or it's just a shameless cash grab. I'm kind of siding with that one.
So, now that it's three films, a re-titling was in order. The plan now for the franchise is this.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey hits theatres December 18, 2012
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug hits theatres December 13, 2013
The Hobbit: There and Back Again hits theatres July 18, 2014.
In the texts, September 22 is listed as Bilbo and Frodo's birthday, so fans the world over celebrate the 22nd as "Hobbit Day" and the week it falls in as "Tolkien Week." So, Peter Jackson promised us a new trailer this week, and we got it back on Wednesday.
I'm digging this trailer. I still like the look of these films. As I've blogged before, when it comes to the books, I've always enjoyed The Hobbit, but found The Lord of the Rings to be boring as fuck. So I'm looking forward to The Hobbit a lot more than I was to The Lord of the Rings. I've said I want to re-read the book before the movie comes out...I'd better get started.
Oh, and something neat, too. If you go to the official Hobbit website, you can see five different versions of the trailer with five different endings. I like the one where Bilbo ponders showing his new-found sword to Elrond and finding out more about it, but one of the dwarfs talks Bilbo out of it, dismissing Bilbo's sword as "a letter opener." I think that scene makes it a little cooler when Bilbo names his sword later on.
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