Editorial Staff
Peter Jackson let it slip on his Facebook page over the weekend that he’s picked a new title for his third and final “Hobbit” movie.
Warner Bros just sent out the presser, reiterating the change :
BURBANK, CA, April 24, 2014—Warner Bros Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and New Line Cinema jointly announced today that the much-anticipated final film in Peter Jackson’s trilogy adaptation of the enduringly popular masterpiece The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien, has now been titled “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.” The film, previously titled “The Hobbit: There and Back Again,” will be released in Australian cinemas December 26, 2014.
Peter Jackson stated, “Our journey to make ‘The Hobbit’ Trilogy has been in some ways like Bilbo’s own, with hidden paths revealing their secrets to us as we’ve gone along. ‘There and Back Again’ felt like the right name for the second of a two-film telling of the quest to reclaim Erebor, when Bilbo’s arrival there, and departure, were both contained within the second film. But with three movies, it suddenly felt misplaced—after all, Bilbo has already arrived ‘there’ in the ‘The Desolation of Smaug.’ When we did the premiere trip late last year, I had a quiet conversation with the studio about the idea of revisiting the title. We decided to keep an open mind until a cut of the film was ready to look at. We reached that point last week, and after viewing the movie, we all agreed there is now one title that feels completely appropriate. And so: ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’ it is.”
