The Hobbit to Be Split into Three Movies Because Peter Jackson Can Only Make Movies in Groups of Three
Caity Weaver
Movie studios are growing ever more brash about squeezing as many films as possible out of every book, as director Peter Jackson confirmed Monday that the upcoming cinematic adaptation of The Hobbit will be split into three films.
Jackson famously directed the Lord of the Rings cinematic trilogy, back in the wasteful days when studios adapted books into films on a 1:1 ratio. If the Lord of the Rings movie project were proposed today, experts estimate that the three books, which totaled 1,008 pages, might easily be stretched to as many as six thousand separate films.
The Hobbit is only about three hundred pages long. However, confident that his book would one day be divided into a dozen movies, author JRR Tolkien also provided 125 pages of Hobbit backstory, billed as "The Appendecies," in a later edition of the final Lord of the Rings novel The Return of the King,.
In a statement released Monday, Jackson spoke directly to the nerds in the audience — all the nerds in the audience, put your hands up and say "Yeah!"
"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."
Shooting for the now-three films has long since been completed, with Martin Freeman (best known for his work as the lead character in the original version of the UK TV series The Office) in the role of Bilbo Baggins.
Release dates have already been announced for the first two films in the Hobbit trilogy. The first, An Unexpected Journey, will be released in December of 2012; the second, There and Back Again, in December 2013.
The final film will likely not be titled There and Back Again: Again, but should be. While an official date has not been announced, there's speculation that it will be released in the summer of 2014.
Though not before undergoing mitosis and splitting itself into several more films.
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