As you already know, Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit has already gone the cash-cow route and been split into two seperate movies. But did you know that Jackson has hinted that he might yet make another movie in this series, turning The Hobbit into a trilogy?

According to some sources, Jackson intends to plumb the rich appendices in the Lord Of The Rings books which detail the 80-year gap between The Hobbit and The Fellowship Of The Ring. This would be the first time that Tolkien’s extensive notes on his characters have been used to essentially write the untold story of Bilbo Baggins’ later years. Jackson has said:

Fran Walsh and I have been talking to the studio about other things we haven’t been able to shoot, and seeing if we could persuade them to do a few more weeks of shooting – probably more than a few weeks, actually, next year – and what form that would actually end up taking. The discussions are pretty early. So there isn’t really anything to report, but there’s other parts of the story that we’d like to tell that we haven’t been able to tell yet.

I’d almost prefer Jackson to smush the first and second parts of The Hobbit together into one fast-moving story and then to have a second movie that acts as a ‘bridge’ between The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings movies. I suppose there’s a part of me that’s worried Jackson might decide to mess with the LotR trilogy and George Lucas the shit out of it. Hopefully not.

Fresh pictures of Andy Serkis as Gollum!

Yesssssss???

And one more thing – we’ve just seen the pictures of Gollum – one of the terrific CGI creation that is Gollum and one of Andy Serkis wearing the now-standard motion capture suit. The CGI Gollum looks even better than before, but I suppose he’d look a bit fresher since he hasn’t spent another 80 years cowering in caves and being tortured by the minions of Sauron, right?

The first instalment is An Unexpected Journey, which is due to be released on 14th December 2012. The second part is titled There And Back Again and will come out in December 2013. If a third movie is ordered, and shooting begins as soon as possible, we could be looking at a third instalment in December 2014. Ah well, something to look forward to now that Harry Potter’s ended. Unless JK Rowling treats us to a Lily and James themed prequel series…

Update: Damon Lindelof (of Lost fame) probably summed it up best with this barbed tweet:

I think THE HOBBIT should be broken into a hundred five-minute installments and released every Christmas until we are all dead.

— Damon Lindelof (@DamonLindelof) July 25, 2012