Director Peter Jackson has confirmed that the final film in his epic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit has a new subtitle. It was initially called There And Back Again, but in a new Facebook post, he explained why the title was changed to The Battle of the Five Armies.
Jackson and Warner Bros. initially planned on only making The Hobbit - a much shorter novel compared to any of the three Lord of the Rings books - into only two movies. An Unexpected Journey was always the first film, but There And Back Again was split in two. The Desolation of Smaug opened this past winter and There And Back Again was slated to open on Dec. 17.
However, Jackson told fans on Facebook that There and Back Again has a new title. He said the title fit the second half of The Hobbit, but wouldn’t work now that there’s three movies.
“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,” Jackson wrote. “But with three movies, it suddenly felt misplaced—after all, Bilbo has already arrived ‘there’ in the Desolation of Smaug.”
Jackson said that he is still editing the movie and that There And Back Again may wind up as the title of a future box set. He also teased that there is an extended cut of Smaug coming, with 25 minutes of extra footage.
The Hobbit films have been expensive to produce and not as critically acclaimed as the Lord of the Rings films. According to Box Office Mojo, the first film grossed $1.02 billion internationally, but Smaug, which did earn better reviews, slipped to $953 million. Both films scored three Oscar nominations each, only in the technical categories.
image via Facebook from Peter Jackson