Rumors have been running rampant as of late that Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, the upcoming two-part prequel to The Lord Of The Rings, would be expanded into a trilogy. There has been no shortage in Hollywood these days of splitting the final chapters in big franchises into two installments, just look at Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games. The speculation regarding The Hobbit getting the same treatment has ranged from simply splitting the planned second chapter, 2013’s There And Back Again into two parts, to going as far as to regroup the entire production in New Zealand for extensive additional shooting which would bridge the gap between the series’ two time frames.
Peter Jackson released the following statement on his Facebook Page today confirming that The Hobbit will indeed hit the big screen as a trilogy of films.
“It is only at the end of a shoot that you finally get the chance to sit down and have a look at the film you have made. Recently Fran, Phil and I did just this when we watched for the first time an early cut of the first movie – and a large chunk of the second. We were really pleased with the way the story was coming together, in particular, the strength of the characters and the cast who have brought them to life. All of which gave rise to a simple question: do we take this chance to tell more of the tale? And the answer from our perspective as the filmmakers, and as fans, was an unreserved ‘yes.’
We know how much of the story of Bilbo Baggins, the Wizard Gandalf, the Dwarves of Erebor, the rise of the Necromancer, and the Battle of Dol Guldur will remain untold if we do not take this chance. The richness of the story of The Hobbit, as well as some of the related material in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, allows us to tell the full story of the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the part he played in the sometimes dangerous, but at all times exciting, history of Middle-earth.
So, without further ado and on behalf of New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Wingnut Films, and the entire cast and crew of “The Hobbit” films, I’d like to announce that two films will become three.
It has been an unexpected journey indeed, and in the words of Professor Tolkien himself, “a tale that grew in the telling.”
Cheers,
Peter J
While principal photography has wrapped on the films, it has always been Jackson’s practice to schedule additional shooting for pick-ups along the way. His statement today does not elaborate exactly on the how or the what the third film will depict. But when asked about adding the third chapter in July at Comic-Con, he had this to say to Hitfix:
“That’s a discussion we’re having, yeah,” Jackson said. “We have certainly been talking to the studio about some of the material we can’t film, and we’ve been asking them so we can do a bit more filming next year. Which, I don’t know what would come of that, whether it’d be extended editions or whatnot. But those discussions are ongoing.”
Jackson has additional supplemental material written by Tolkien he can use as the source material for fleshing out the years in between the conclusion of The Hobbit and the first scenes of The Fellowship of the Ring. Whether this is his plan or not remains to be seen. When asked at the press conference at Comic-Con, this is what Jackson had to say further regarding the possibilities:
“It’s very premature. I mean we have an incredible source material with the appendices because ‘The Hobbit’ is obviously a novel but we also have the rights to use this 125 pages of additional notes where Tolkien expanded the world of ‘The Hobbit’ published at the end of ‘Return of the King’ and we’ve used some of it so far (and just in the last few weeks as we’ve been wrapping up the shooting) and thinking about the shape of the story. Fran and I have been talking to the studio about other things we haven’t been able to shoot and seeing if we could persuade them to do a few more weeks of shooting. Probably more than a few weeks actually, next year, and what form that would actually end up taking. The discussions are pretty early. So there isn’t really anything to report but there’s other parts of the story that we’d like to tell that we haven’t been able to tell yet.”
Variety’s Josh Dickey revealed on his Twitter feed that the third chapter will be released in the summer of 2014, whereas the first two have firm December 2012 and 2013 release dates set.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will hit theaters in 2-D, 3-D, and IMAX on December 14, 2012.
SOURCE: Peter Jackson, Hitfix
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