Studios Announce Third 'The Hobbit' Title, Release Date

Whether J.R.R. Tolkien devotees object or not to the director's liberties, so this December begins what will ultimately be three - not two - years with Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit."

Warner Bros. and MGM Studios Friday together announced a shuffling of the Academy Award-winning "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" director's trilogy's titles and an additional third release date. Jackson's trilogy finale will be called "The Hobbit: There and Back Again" and hits theaters everywhere July 18, 2014, Deadline reported Friday.

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Initially, "There and Back Again" was to be the title of Jackson's second chapter in the Tolkien trilogy, now called "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" and hitting theaters as scheduled on December 13, 2013. The first film remains titled "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" and will still release Dec. 14, 2012.

The "first two" films were shot back-to-back in New Zealand over 2011 and 2012, and are now in post-production. The "third film" will be edited together from materials unused in the theatrical cuts of the first two films and yet-to-be-shot additional scenes yet to go into production.

"We've been certainly talking to the studio about some of the material we can't film," Jackson said circa this past summer's San Diego Comic-Con. "And we've been asking them if we can do a bit more filming next year. Which I don't know what would come of that, whether that would be extended editions or not. But those discussions are ongoing. ... I'd like to shoot a bunch more material that we can't shoot. There's so much good stuff in the appendices that we haven't been able to squeeze into these movies. That's a discussion that we're having, yeah."

As with the first two installments, Jackson will reportedly be shooting the third in digital 3D. The additional filming and principal photography is slated to begin at Stone Studios in Wellington, New Zealand, some time in 2013. The trilogy is set to star Ian McKellan, Martin Freeman, Andy Serkis, Hugo Weaving and Benedict Cumberbatch.