I just picture Bilbo and Gandalf having a conversation (ala Seinfeld) about how this is a movie about nothing

Possibly some with Radagast - I'm not a LOTR expert, but didn't he help orchestrate Gandalf's escape from Saruman?

The Hobbit films could also give some nods to scenes from LOTR that didn't make it in.

Think we'll have midichlorians in the first or second movie now?

George Lucas raped my childhood. And now Peter Jackson is planning to rape my late 20's!

Yeah I think that little bird thingie that Galdalf snatched out of the air was Radagast's buddy. he whispered something to that thing and apparently it flew off to Radagast. Radagast was also tight with the Eagles, so he sent his Eagle buddy to rescue Gandalf.

I've always liked the Hobbit's intimate and smaller scale (relatively) than LOTR, and really feel it could make one cracking 2 1/2 hour movie. Two maybe. But three just seems like milking it.

From what I've read I get the impression the third film will be more stuff "in-between" the Hobbit and LOTR.

I have heard that the the first movie will have about an hour of Bilbo out camping in the woods with Ron and Hermione added to it to pad it out.

I was looking forward to The Hobbit when it was going to be one film. When they decided to split it into two I started to lose interest. Now that it is three, I have a bad feeling this will be like the Star Wars prequels, one disappointment after another.

From everything I have read, the new films will not overlap at all with the previous films' timeline (not counting flashbacks and the prologue). All of it will take place prior to the opening scene of The Fellowship of the Ring.

Will they be singing row, row your boat?

That's the third movie.

Absolutely agreed. They should have started splitting the Potter movies with Goblet of Fire, IMHO.

Looking forward to this. I've read The Hobbit and LOTR many times, but I never quite could keep my eyes open long enough to make any headway with the appendices. Yeah, I admit it.

While that may be true in many cases, it isn't the case for The Hobbit (at least, not for the actual book itself). The Hobbit is only 95000 words. Compare that to The Fellowship of the Ring, which was successfully translated into one movie, at a word count of 187000 (and the movie even included a couple of scenes from the second book).

I think it would be possible to film every single scene from the original book, and still fit it into one film.

I completely agree. I was shocked when I heard The Hobbit would be 2 movies. Somebody said that all books should only be 1 movie. I was just saying that not ALL books could fit into 1 movie, but I think The Hobbit definitely could.

This movie looks laughably bad.

Fixed.

I'm waiting for the next Dr. Suess book movie adaptation to be split into three films:

Green Eggs & Ham: In a House, With a Mouse
Green Eggs & Ham: In a Box, With a Fox
Green Eggs & Ham: In the Rain, On a Train

Oh hell, just saw the news. I guess it's time to unretire as a TheOneRing.net staffer since this is going to drag on for years yet.

No, the third movie needs to be called "Would you, could you, with a goat?"

If I'm sitting through 6-9 hours of film, I hope it has twenty. Hell, end it with Bilbo getting on that ship.

And you guys can bitch all you want. But everyone wanted more Lord of the Rings. EVERYONE. I could have sat through a 30 hours Lord of the Rings film.

But then I remember that everyone WANTED Matrix sequels. And everyone WANTED another Die Hard movie.

How much stuff is there in the LOTR appendices? All of the Tolkien Middle Earth mythology has become sort of a blur to me over the years.

I suppose they could show some flashbacks to Melkor and the First Age if that stuff is referenced in LOTR. The White Council vs "The Necromancer" could take up quite a bit of screen time. Some young Aragorn and Arwen stuff? Since he was 90 in "Lord of the Rings" he would be a young man at that time even if he wasn't referenced in The Hobbit book at all.

Do you watch LOTR or The Hobbit first? Let the debates begin!