Until then, though, and for everyone sitting out the gathering, we have these stills, which are from an even larger gallery at Entertainment Weekly as part of the magazine's Comic-Con preview. Said images include looks at Martin Freeman as Bilbo and a bunch of new dwarfs, as well as familiar faces like Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, and Hugo Weaving. Then there's Gollum, the CGI creature portrayed by Andy Serkis via motion capture.
Additionally, Jackson chimed in on the incorporation of new characters not featured in Tolkein's original text, saying, "In the movie we want these characters to have story lines and a little more substance than they do in the book. Almost everything we’re doing is from Tolkien somewhere, whether it’s in the book or the subsequent development that wasn’t published in The Hobbit itself.”
Again, check out the full gallery at EW in order to see all the new images.
The Hobbit movies see the return of many key creative figures from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, including Jackson and his co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. The trio shares writing credit with Guillermo del Toro, who was attached to direct for quite some time while the films were trapped in development thanks to ongoing legal issues and assorted nonsense.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey arrives in theaters this December 14, followed by The Hobbit: There and Back Again on December 13, 2013.
