“You are going to get some serious disrespect of the elves at Rivendell,” Peter Jackson warns Hobbit fans. The extended version of the first Hobbit movie, An Unexpected Journey, is due for release on Blu-ray and DVD just a month before the sequel comes out. The director tells Empire he is now editing and leaving some scenes out of the theatrical cut, since people don’t need to worry about them, but they will be shown in the detailed version. “We are putting things in the extended cut that are going to play straight into the second film,” Jackson explains, “like this character Girion, who is defending [the city of] Dale using black arrows against Smaug. And the black arrows play a part in the ongoing story, for they are the one thing that can pierce the dragon’s hide.” This will now be seen in the extended prologue, with Girion’s badly aimed black arrows bouncing off Smaug’s scales rather than puncturing his underbelly. “The are also issues with Thranduil [played by Lee Pace],” adds Jackson. “We get some of the reasons why he and the dwarfs had a falling out – to do with these white gems…” We will learn from the elves’ perspective, why they didn’t come to the dwarves’ aid.
“It’s unique,” concludes the director on having his story operate on two levels. “Not many other movies have this facility.”

The August issue of Empire hits shops on Thursday June 27. You can find the first scans of it in our gallery.

Lee Pace and his The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug co-stars Evangeline Lilly and Orlando Bloom cover the August issue of Empire magazine. The article offers more insights into the trilogy’s key second instalment, filming process and more.

The second cover is the collector’s edition and will only be available for subscribers.

The August issue of Empire hits shops on Thursday June 27.

GALLERY LINKS:
– Magazine Scans > Empire (August 2013)

Kili and Fili of TheOneRing.net recorded themselves watching the Desolation of Smaug trailer for the first time. Few days ago, Peter Jackson asked three of the cast members to watch the fan reactions, and recorded their reaction.

We can now confirm that Lee Pace joined the cast in New Zealand, where they are currently filming pick ups for the final two Hobbit films, Desolation of Smaug and There and Back Again.

Desolation of Smaug opens in theaters December 13.

The first official poster for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug has been released. The movie is coming to theaters December 13, 2013.

Last week, Peter Jackson hosted a Q&A you could only watch if you had purchased the ‘Unexpected Journey’ Blu-Ray and entered a code from the DVD package. In the Q&A, Jackson takes questions from fans, including Stephen Colbert and actor Billy Boyd and shows off some behind-the-scenes footage which features Lee Pace as Thranduil, Orlando Bloom as Legolas, Evangeline Lily as the elf archer Tauriel and Luke Evans as the human Bard the Bowman. The Hobbit director commented: “The great thing about the second [‘Hobbit’] movie — as it was with the ‘Two Towers’ actually — is that the stories start splitting up into multiple story lines and we can follow different characters as the story intensifies and the stakes go up”. One of those story lines, as you can tell from the footage, will be the introduction of the elves from Mirkwood.

“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” opens later this year on December 13th.

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