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Official statement from Jackson confirms: The Hobbit is going to be broken up into 3 movies.

So basically they are going back to the original premise for these films.

I for one welcome 2 extra/unexpected awesome movies.

Twilight needed 5 movies and nothing important happened.

3 Hobbit movies?

Yes plz

Even Peter Jackson couldn't pull off a Silmarilion movie, so this is all we get. String it out I say!

DAMMIT I was just about to post this in the Hobbit thread.

My source was different though (Peter Jackson's facebook)...
https://www.facebook.com/notes/peter-jackson/an-unexpected-journey/10151114596546558

Peter Jackson can have all my money.

I have to wonder how this happens when they're already done principle photography. And are the actors signed on for a trilogy? Do they have to trek back out there and rebuild sets again (Good thing they built hobbiton out of stone and wood and left it up this time as a tourist attraction instead of the polystyrene sets from LOTR that got taken down)....

My best guess is actually that they found these movies are just running too long and the simplest and easiest fix is the most obvious- turn it into three.

Probably was 4 hours each.

Instead of cutting 45 minutes of content last time and putting it on the DVD.... just make another movie.

2.5 - 2.5 - 3

The book is like 300 pages long. How is he going to pad it into another movie?

Am I the only one thinking this is overkill? The Hobbit is a very short book (compared to a lot of much longer books that got one movie). What can they possibly do with it that needs two movies, let alone three?

Gared said:

Spoilered in case this is accurate.

Spoiler

The first movie is going to be everything up to the point that they get to Misty Mountain. The second movie will be completely devoted to the battle at the mountain. And the third movie will be everything that happens after the battle... you know, the last 10 pages of the book?

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What Gared said plus the extra 100 or so pages in the appendix of the Lord of the Rings.

ThatNickGuy said:

Am I the only one thinking this is overkill? The Hobbit is a very short book (compared to a lot of much longer books that got one movie). What can they possibly do with it that needs two movies, let alone three?

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That's basically what I fear.

We're in for a lot of dwarf songs.

Hi Ho! Hi Ho! It's off to work we go!

ThatNickGuy said:

Am I the only one thinking this is overkill? The Hobbit is a very short book (compared to a lot of much longer books that got one movie). What can they possibly do with it that needs two movies, let alone three?

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You are not alone.

ThatNickGuy said:

Am I the only one thinking this is overkill? The Hobbit is a very short book (compared to a lot of much longer books that got one movie). What can they possibly do with it that needs two movies, let alone three?

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The Hobbit is a short book, but a lot goes unmentioned and is only told in Unfinished Tales. Reading the book, we get
"And then Gandalf buggered off for a while."....
.... "And then Gandalf came back"

But we don't get any of what happened with the White Council. Radagast the Brown isn't even mentioned in the Hobbit, but he arguably played a bigger role in the story than he did in Lord of the Rings, when you look at Gandalf's arc (The story could be told without mentioning the White Council, as Tolkien originally did tell it, but this is a major event to that ties the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings together; it's probably going to be the main focus of the second movie). Similarily, when Bilbo is seperated from the Dwarves, the book follows Bilbo only. We don't see how the dwarves escape the misty mountains. And when we get to the battle of Five Armies, Bilbo is knocked unconcious and we only get a quick recap of what happened from Gandalf afterward. In a movie, you can bet that will be expanded, to take up at least 20 minutes.

I've said before and I'll say it again right now: The Hobbit is a short book that is actually really heavy with plot. It's short because it's a children's book and uses simpler language and focuses on ONE party member's perspective, not because there is less going on. Looking at everything that happens in it, I can very easily see how it would take two movies to tell.


But I really don't get how it can be extended to three. Even if the third movie is meant to "Bridge the gap" between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, that means we get a movie where Bomber get's fatter, a couple of dwarves die of old age, and basically everyone goes into retirement. The only thing of note that happens between the two that I can think of is the Dwarves attempting to reoccupy Moria (Which would actually be awesome to see), but that doesn't seem like enough.

Gared said:

Spoilered in case this is accurate.

Spoiler

The first movie is going to be everything up to the point that they get to Misty Mountain. The second movie will be completely devoted to the battle at the mountain. And the third movie will be everything that happens after the battle... you know, the last 10 pages of the book?

Click to expand...

[DOUBLEPOST=1343685294][/DOUBLEPOST]I'm also with Nick and Gas on this being a bad idea. I didn't even want two movies--it feels like it's gonna stretch out what should be a simple story.

If we need to see all sides of this time period, I'd rather have a Bilbo movie, a Gandalf movie, etc.

Unless Jay's suggestion is correct. I don't mind that, if they just don't want to cut too much. Padding is what I can't stand.

Quotemander Prime said:

Unless Jay's suggestion is correct. I don't mind that, if they just don't want to cut too much. Padding is what I can't stand.

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I'm visited by bad memories of warg riders and love triangles from Two Towers.

Yeah, padding is what I'm worried about.
Like I keep saying, I can understand two movies out of the Hobbit. Three I can't fathom.

checkeredhat said:

My best guess is actually that they found these movies are just running too long and the simplest and easiest fix is the most obvious- turn it into three.

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My best guess is they wanted 24 dollars a head instead of 16.

That doesn't make sense at this point in the game though. I'm sure that it factors in heavily. But that decision would have been made months ago. Principle photography is already wrapped up, with just a few pick ups for the second one left. That is not the time to make a decision to start filming a third, when your sets are already destroyed, your actors have gone home and none of them have signed a three picture deal. If you're going to pad out a film for the sake of the extra cash, you make that decision early on, so that you can actually write it that way and shoot it that way.
They wrote and shot for 2. Aside from pick-ups, which leads me to believe that they have an abundance of material. I just can't figure out how.

On the very strange idea that number of pages somehow should directly correlate to length of adaptation on film:

Lord of the Rings: 1,349 pages, including prologue but not including appendices, 557 minutes total for all three movies
A Game of Thrones: 835 pages, first season = 565 minutes. (514 pages shorter, 8 minutes longer)

For that matter,
Where the Wild Things are, 48 pages, 104 minutes
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 841 pages, 158 minutes

Gared said:

Quotemander Prime yes, that one. I tried re-reading the Hobbit recently, but just couldn't do it.

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I used to think you were cool.

(I friggin' love the Hobbit. You have no idea.)

I love The Hobbit.

I could never read LOTR again though. I can't believe I made it through once.

I have read LOTR twice. I have read The Hobbit an unknowable amount of times. My mom used to read the Hobbit to me before bed (A chapter or two per night, obviously not the whole book every night), then when I was old enough, we'd read it together, until eventually she didn't need to help me with any of the words and then I'd read it to myself.

It is probably one of the most personally defining things in my life, now that I think about it. I mean it got me into reading. I'm not a huge bookworm, but I definitely read more than anyone I knew in public school, and still more than like 90% of the people in high school. I'm sure there's a strong correlation between that and my good grades and my interest in the arts.

I don't have a cool "coming into reading" story sadly. As with most things in my life, dinosaurs made me do it.

Don't hate me for it... but I never ever liked Tolkie's writing. He was drab and long-winded going into painstaking detail that bored the shit out of me. Is the story good? Absolutely. He just didn't write it in a way I enjoyed reading in LOTR books.

That's just me though.

Jay said:

Don't hate me for it... but I never ever liked Tolkie's writing. He was drab and long-winded going into painstaking detail that bored the shit out of me. Is the story good? Absolutely. He just didn't write it in a way I enjoyed reading in LOTR books.

That's just me though.

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That's why George R.R. Martin is my fantasy master now. I love the way he writes.

Tolkien wasn't really writing a novel, which sounds weird to say but it's true. He was trying to write a myth. LOTR reads more like the Iliad, Beowulf, or Gilgamesh than a modern novel.

But why did I love reading the Iliad or Beowulf repeatedly to completion?

I dunno, man. I dunno. Lord of the Rigns, really, sits somewhere inbetween, since it doesn't actually follow a pattern like Beowulf. Maybe that's why. It's like half and half, and for you it's the worst half of each.

Once again, I love the story.... just didn't like his writing style. That's just me.

As the beard pointed out... when I started reading Game of Thrones... that was MY LIFE for 4 months as I read the 5 books.

Let me put this bluntly... I'd rather read an entire Bran chapter than reading a page from Fellowship of the Ring.

Tolkien is a linguaphile. He wanted to write a language. That language turned out to be elvish, when he wrote a story about that language.

He actually created way more than just Elvish.
He created Elvish, the Black speech, dwarvish, and the language that the Rohirrim speak but I can't remember what it's called. Probably more languages than that, I'm sure. But he was more than just writing a language, he LITERALLY was trying to write a myth. He hated that the only real English myth, King Arthur, was largely taken from French influence, and wanted to write a uniquely English myth.

LOTR felt like a chore and I read it because I was determined to read it before seeing the movies. Ended up liking the movies more, because there is a good story under that stone and chisel prose.

Reading The Iliad never felt like work. I always enjoyed it and have come to realize no movie will ever capture how awesome it is. I actually got graded down in class for this because by enjoying it I was "reading it wrong". Oh, Lit professors...

Three movies, you say?

Well, considering that seeing The Hobbit on the silver screen is part of my cancer-inspired anti-bucket list, I take this as a good omen. I'll just go and get the money ready for Mr Jackson...

also for the record, I don't really like the writing of LOTR or Game of Thrones

Is the 3d expected to be like Avatar, or should I just see it in 2d?

blotsfan said:

Is the 3d expected to be like Avatar, or should I just see it in 2d?

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Well they at least shot it in 3D which is at least something.

blotsfan said:

Is the 3d expected to be like Avatar, or should I just see it in 2d?

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They're filming it with 3D cameras, not doing post-production 3D, if that's what you mean. They mentioned it in at least one of the blog posts, and the latest one had a shot of PJ wearing the special glasses while on set so he could see what the scene was actually going to look like.

Also these movies are getting shot at a different frames per second than normal so it's gonna be all kinds of fucked up

Charlie Don't Surf said:

Also these movies are getting shot at a different frames per second than normal so it's gonna be all kinds of fucked up

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Yeah, I'm actually way less excited about this. I really like 24fps. Not a big fan of the super-realistic frame rates.

Espy said:

Yeah, I'm actually way less excited about this. I really like 24fps. Not a big fan of the super-realistic frame rates.

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I'm with you... I love the cinematic feel of 24fps.

I think that's going to be a bigger deal than the 3D, ultimately. I'm curious if they will / will be able to change it between movies. I kind of suspect people are going to freak out and hate it.

So instead of feeling like I'm watching an epic journey, it's going to feel like I'm watching actors on a set?

Couldn't they have picked some other movie to fucking experiment with first?

Well, it IS possible that the higher frame rate will not only make 3D look better, but it will also allow you to not compare it to the regular 24 fps to which you are used. Isn't it?

tegid said:

Well, it IS possible that the higher frame rate will not only make 3D look better, but it will also allow you to not compare it to the regular 24 fps to which you are used. Isn't it?

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I dunno, I guess we will find out. I'm not 100% against the higher frame rate but I need to be shown why it's better. Maybe the Hobbit will do that. Maybe not.

I bet most people won't be able to tell the difference. They might think something about it a bit off, but attribute that to the 3D.

If you notice it at all, I suspect it'll be slightly off putting at first, but you'll have plenty of time to get used to it.

It will only be shown at the higher frame rate in theaters equipped to do so anyway.

One of the reasons to go to the higher frame rate, in fact, is to reduce the likelihood of headaches associated with 3D. Apparently many who get headaches in 3D don't get them, or find them much reduced, with a higher frame rate.

It may have something to do with the fact that the human eye can detect polarization, which is used to separate the two frames. The slower frame rate coupled with the distinct polarization may tweak the peripheral visual receptors in an uncomfortable way. By going to a faster frame rate you eliminate the flickering.

Have you ever noticed that in bright sunlight, if your LCD watch is in your peripheral vision it seems to pulse or flicker? Same effect. The LCD is actually refreshing 20 to 30 times a second, and it's polarized. You don't notice it when you're looking straight on because your central visual receptors, the fovea, don't discsern polarization, and due to the color receptors have a much lower refresh rate.

The hope is that by increasing the frame rate they can make 3D movies more palatable to a wider range of audiences.

It does change the movie visually though. We will see if they use that to good effect, or if its actually worse.