Shaun Gunner, the chairman of The Tolkien Society, supported the decision: " ' The Battle of the Five Armies ' much better captures the focus of the film but also more accurately channels the essence of the story. when you lay out the cards fro[ sic] the story beats contained within the book (before even considering any apendix[ sic] material) the work is enormous and encompasses more than one film. Smaug destroyed the nearby town of Dale, drove the Dwarves out of their mountain and took their hoard of gold.

Director Peter Jackson explained last year that he attempted to address visual inconsistency in the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies with the 4K HDR Blu-ray sets released by Warner Bros. He also noted the story must be drawn from only what is mentioned in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as they do not have the rights to The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.DelToro collaborated with Jackson, Walsh and Boyens via videoconferencing and flew every three weeks, back and forth from Los Angeles (where some of the designs were done) [28] to New Zealand to visit them.

Gage was originally cast to play Drogo Baggins in December 2010, though according to Jackson, "Ryan is a great young actor who we originally cast in a small role, but we liked him so much, we promoted him to the much larger Alfrid part".The film received numerous accolades; at the 85th Academy Awards, it was nominated for Best Production Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Visual Effects. There are a few times in your career when you come across an actor who you know was born to play a role, but that was the case as soon as I met Martin Freeman. In the Shire, 50-year-old Bilbo is tricked by the wizard Gandalf the Grey into hosting a dinner for Thorin and his company of Dwarves: Balin, Dwalin, Fíli, Kíli, Dori, Nori, Ori, Óin, Glóin, Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur. With the theatrical version clocking in at 2 hours, 40 minutes, that means Extended Edition will run at least 3 hours.

net that "In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming", he would "take leave from helming", further stating that "the mounting pressures of conflicting schedules have overwhelmed the time slot originally allocated for the project.

Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield II: the leader of the Company of dwarves who has set out to reclaim his birthright as King of the Lonely Mountain from Smaug. Del Toro felt the Wargs had to be changed because "the classical incarnation of the demonic wolf in Nordic mythology is not a hyena-shaped creature". Jackson was also interested in showing Gollum's journey to Mordor and Aragorn setting a watch on the Shire. Jackson recorded a video blog from the set, which featured Christopher Lee in full makeup and costume as Saruman. The films are subtitled An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Desolation of Smaug (2013), and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014).