We’re now less than eleven months away from Peter Jackson’s return to Middle-earth with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first of his two-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s original novel, followed by The Hobbit: There And Back Again next December.
We’ve seen and heard some fantastic things from the new film already, most recently including Evangeline Lilly updating us on her character, Tauriel, created especially for the film. She spoke to Yahoo Movies about her preparations for the role, with thanks to ComicBookMovie for the heads up, and in the same report, Yahoo have put out a great new picture of Martin Freeman as Bilbo, almost lost amongst the dwarves.
“The Hobbit follows the journey of title character Bilbo Baggins, who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild. Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers.
Although their goal lies to the East and the wastelands of the Lonely Mountain first they must escape the goblin tunnels, where Bilbo meets the creature that will change his life forever … Gollum.
Here, alone with Gollum, on the shores of an underground lake, the unassuming Bilbo Baggins not only discovers depths of guile and courage that surprise even him, he also gains possession of Gollum’s “precious” ring that holds unexpected and useful qualities … A simple, gold ring that is tied to the fate of all Middle-earth in ways Bilbo cannot begin to know.”
We recently saw a much darker image of Freeman this month with his faithful sword, Sting, and this new image looks similar to the first images we saw from the film, still in The Shire. Alongside Freeman, we can look forward to seeing many new and familiar faces, including Andy Serkis, Stephen Fry, Hugo Weaving, Evangeline Lilly, Luke Evans, Benedict Cumberbatch, Richard Armitage, Ian McKellen, Ian Holm, Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, Cate Blanchett, and Christopher Lee.
The Hobbit will be released in 3D with An Unexpected Journey kicking things off on 14th December this year, followed by There and Back Again on 13th December next year. Until then, here’s the new image, which you can click to enlarge. And in case you missed it at the end of last year, you can watch the wonderful first trailer right here, as well as everything else The Hobbit-related here. If you’d like to read more about Lilly’s preparations for the role, click through over here. Enjoy.
