The Official Titles & Release Dates

As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, the three films now have their official names and release dates. Here they are:

The first film

This movie will release on 14th December, 2012

Fans world wide have been speculating about where the first film will end. Spoiler ahead, please don’t read if you are one of those who don’t want to know where the book will be broken up in the movies.

The current thought is that the movie will end after the company gets rescued from the goblin cum warg attack with the help of the eagles… Not a great place to end the movie but hey, it’s a probability not a certainty.

The second film

This movie will release on 13th December, 2013

The second film is releasing a year later – sigh. A big wait that, but well, it will make the year more interesting to say the least. 😉 The title is self-explanatory as to where it will end. So Smaug, the Magnificent, will finally be struck down by the end of 2013. 😀

The third film

This movie will release on 18th July, 2014

Ah, now this release date is interesting. We do not have to wait for a year to find out the end to this one. Honestly though, I am hoping that besides the Battle of the Five Armies, we get to see a movement into the following The Lord of the Rings in this installment of The Hobbit.

The Hollywood Reporter had this to say:

In sharp contrast to Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the second and third Hobbit pics will open within seven months of each other (the Lord of the Rings pics opened a year apart, at Christmas).

“We wanted to have a shorter gap between the second and third films,” Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution Dan Fellman said in a statement. “Opening in July affords us not only the perfect summer tentpole, but fans will have less time to wait for the finale of this epic adventure.”

Veronika Kwan Vandenberg, president of international distribution, added: “The Hobbit: There and Back Again will be an action spectacle and an emotional conclusion for this already much-anticipated trilogy. Opening in the summer will maximize playability for what promises to be an event film for fans the world over.”

Evangeline Lilly Speaks About Her Part in The Hobbit Films

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Empire Unleashes First Hobbit Cover

Ian Nathan reports on empireonline.com:

Over ten years ago, catching a whiff something really big was going down in New Zealand, Empire decided to feature the next film from promising Kiwi director Peter Jackson on its cover. After all, he just happened to be making The Lord Of The Rings.

So in honour of Jackson’s long-awaited return to Middle-earth for two dragon-and-dwarf-laden prequels — as a “good luck charm” according the director — Empire takes its symbolic and rightful place as the first magazine in the world to put The Hobbit on its cover. A resplendent ‘younger’ Gandalf the Grey (look closely for subtle differences in costume from his 60-year older Rings self) taking centre stage alongside the first look at Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins (keep your eyes peeled for a hint or two of dwarf in the issue).

Source

Questions by Ben Child

The Hobbit

A few questions that Ben Child asks in the guardian.co.uk about The Hobbit Films and some comments that he makes regarding the plot of the movies. Interesting since many of us are wondering the same things he writes about…

It’s certainly a tantalising prospect. What shape will Sauron take – Tolkien offers no clues – as he will presumably not yet have assumed the form of a great eye in which he appears in Lord of the Rings? And does this mean that the 89-year-old Christopher Lee has made the trip to New Zealand after all to reprise his role as Saruman? Perhaps his part will be shot against blue screen in the UK – we may have to wait a while to find out.

Structurally, of course, the presence of the scene further Lord of the Ringsises (apologies for the clumsy phrase) The Hobbit. Tolkien’s book is a gentle, linear fable which rarely leaves Bilbo Baggins’s side (the brief period at the end of the story when the great dragon Smaug leaves his lair to rain down fire and terror on nearby Laketown, and later when the hobbit is asleep during the battle of five armies are the only instances I can recall). Lord of the Rings was a sprawling narrative which split and split again over the course of the book, following different members of the original fellowship of the ring on their separate adventures. Pulling us away from the central story will present The Hobbit through a very different prism to that which was originally intended.

Having said this, Jackson is really only doing what Tolkien himself attempted to do after the publication of Lord of the Rings. The author also revised his earlier tome in an effort to smooth out stylistic differences. Gollum was made more sinister and his dependence on the ring more unnerving in the 1951 edition, but a later more radical revision was abandoned after Tolkien realised he would have to make too many changes.

On the positive side, the presence of Saruman, Galadriel, Ian Holm’s elder Bilbo, Legolas and even Elijah Wood’s Frodo (goodness only knows how they are going to shoehorn him in) ought to make The Hobbit movies feel like a genuine prequel project. Part of me says more power to Jackson, who has already shown he has the chops to prep difficult material from the same author for the big screen. The other part bristles at all this tinkering with Tolkien. I can already see myself being jolted out of my reverie in the cinema in six months’ time when Bloom pops up out of nowhere, his shiny elf hair flailing out behind him in the wind, to take out some poor Orc who’s been threatening mischief. “That’s not in the book!” will be the thought going through every Tolkien reader’s mind, but maybe … just maybe …. we might be better saving our outrage for more important battles.

Source

The Hobbit Films Titles and Release Dates Confirmed

Well, though fans worldwide knew and I had already posted it here, it was confirmed by Warner Bros that the official names of The Hobbit Films will be:

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Which will be released on December 14th, 2012

The Hobbit: There and Back Again
which will be released on December 13th, 2013

So yay! we have Official names and dates of release!