I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that the various Hobbit films were not quite long enough, right? I mean, Peter Jackson already managed to turn a 300 page children’s adventure story into a three-film epic, with each instalment totalling over two hours of dwarf-on-dragon action. Is it possible for him to squeeze anything more out of the classic novel? Yes, apparently it is, as we now have word that there will indeed be yet another extended cut, this time of the yet-to-be-released The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, with a remarkable 30 minutes of footage added.
At a recent press conference in London, director Jackson revealed that there will be more Hobbit to go around, just as soon as he gets home and manages to put all that painfully trimmed footage back into the finished film. The extended cut will probably released on Blu-ray sometime in the middle of 2015. So if you thought that the Hobbit saga was almost over, think again.
However, it must be said that at least the sum total of the Hobbit extended cuts will not be more than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. With An Unexpected Journey totalling 183 minutes (that’s only 13 minutes of new footage), and The Desolation of Smaug coming in at 186 minutes (with 26 minutes of new footage), the full trilogy will only total about 543 minutes, a full 137 minutes shorter than Lord of the Rings! So, really, Jackson has been most circumspect.
We can still hold out hope that The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies will not be too overlong, though I wouldn’t put money on that. Jackson has not exactly made a name for himself as a circumspect filmmaker.
