Peter Jackson‘s adaptation of The Hobbit is underway. And despite some production setbacks, everything now appears to be rolling full steam ahead. So much so that they are confident in revealing titles and release dates for the two Hobbit films. The two parts will be called will be called The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again. The first of which will be released on December 13, 2012, while the latter will hit theaters December 13, 2013. For all those J.R.R. Tolkien fans out there, that’s two straight years of Christmas presents from Jackson and crew. Read the official press release after the jump.

It’s long been rumored that Orlando Bloom would be reprising his role as the elf Legolas for Peter Jackson’s upcoming two-parter The Hobbit. Giving the whispers, a lot of people have been quick to point out that Bloom coming back wouldn’t make any sense, as Legolas appears nowhere in J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel. Regardless of mutterings from the purists, the news is now official, as Jackson has used his Facebook Page to confirm: “Ten years ago, Orlando Bloom created an iconic character with his portrayal of Legolas. I’m excited to announce today that we’ll be revisiting Middle Earth with him once more. I’m thrilled to be working with Orlando again. Funny thing is, I look older — and he doesn’t! I guess that’s why he makes such a wonderful elf.” When you add this news to the fact that Ian Holm is also confirmed to show up somewhere in this production as Bilbo (who will also be played by Martin Freeman), it becomes clear that Jackson’s films are going to link The Hobbit with The Lord of the Rings trilogy much more closely than Tolkien’s books did. What we’re going to see will either have to be a flashback structure where the characters we met in the first three films are looking back on the events of The Hobbit, or new material that will create a bridge between the two stories.

British actor Martin Freeman has been on a real roll over the last decade. Many people first came to know him as Tim in the original UK version of The Office, then he went on to make appearances in the much beloved Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg film comedies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and then he went on to great acclaim playing a modern version of Dr. Watson on BBC’s outstanding series Sherlock. But probably the biggest news of Freeman’s career came when he was cast in the lead role of Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s upcoming The Hobbit. Now, Freeman’s string of good luck may be over, because he’s opened his mouth when he shouldn’t and caused a big kerfuffle. According to Freeman, his Sherlock and The Hobbit worlds are about to collide. While picking up Sherlock’s BAFTA award for Best Drama, he let slip that his co-star on that show, Benedict Cumberbatch, was all set to join the cast of Jackson’s fantasy epic as well. This news comes as a bit of a shock, as Cumberbatch has been made a pretty large name due to his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, with production already ongoing this is pretty late in the game to be adding new actors to The Hobbit, and all the big roles seem to be taken. The news also came as a shock to Cumberbatch himself, who said that his casting was supposed to be a surprise and that he wouldn’t reveal anything else about [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

According to a Facebook post from director Peter Jackson, the brilliant Stephen Fry will be in The Hobbit, playing the Master of Laketown. It’s pitch perfect casting that should play both to Fry’s larger-than-life comedic skills and his ability to play complex, darker characters. As fans of the book know, the Master of Laketown is a politician through and through in his hand-shaking, smiley enthusiasm, but depending on what is kept for the movie, the character could experience some tragedies to round out that grin on his face. In huge, yet minor, casting news, Jackson also announced that Conan Stevens will be playing the Orc Azor. Fans of Game of Thrones know him as Gregor Clegane and also know that he is 7 feet tall and looks like an MMA fighter. In addition, Ryan Gage (who, no lie, was in the original 1995 Judge Dredd) was going to play Drogo Baggins, but has gotten a promotion to the larger part of Master of Laketown’s civil servant Alfrid. There are about one hundred million thousand other roles, and most of the rest of the casting will be minor, but Jackson is consistent about letting fans in on the process, so we’ll continue to keep an omnipresent eye on it. Just one though. And the eye will be on fire.

Yesterday we got to see some poster goodness from The Adventures of Tintin, and, as promised, the teaser trailer has followed suit. It’s quick, but it spends its precious few seconds creating some suspense and teasing the action. A young man chasing a car into the street with a gun, a bi-plane crashing in the desert, a ship pounding its way through the seas. See it for yourself:

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s all business tonight. Movie news, fascinating articles, at least 12-minutes of grown men screaming. All business, baby. Vulture has an interesting piece on how Jeremy Renner landed the Bourne franchise, essentially boiling it down to the Hurt Locker star winning Matt Damon’s sloppy seconds. All-in-all, the guy will probably make an excellent action star. He’s one hell of a last-ditch effort for director Tony Gilroy.

It seems like it’s pretty much always been the plan to have The Hobbit bleed into The Fellowship of the Ring, creating two earnest prequel movies for the giant trilogy. However, Drew McWeeny over at HitFix is right to point out how fascinating the speed of information is coming these days about projects like this. Ian Holm will be returning in his role as Bilbo Baggins which either means Peter Jackson is bravely making Bilbo an elderly man battling dragons (and Martin Freeman is just a decoy) or that we’ll get some degree of bookending with Holm bouncing Elijah Wood on his knee. Maybe the film will open with the storyteller, maybe it will simply close, but at this point, the most fascinating mystery left is the possibility that we’re reading casting news that we might not get to experience on screen until over 2 years from now (when the second installment comes out). Of course, he might very well be in the first installment, too, but can’t we at least pretend to have a few unknowns since the movies haven’t even finished filming?

It looks like everyone is throwing their hats into the ring. When the studios announced a plan to release movies in home theaters just 30 days after the theaters located outside the home (with a price tag of $30 per rental), the National Association of Theater Owners balked. Apparently their threat to boycott big blockbusters was a fake, but they haven’t kept secret their disgust for the new model that would limit their ability to make money showing movies (since studios take the 50%-100% lion’s share of the ticket split in the first weeks). Now, 23 directors and producers are speaking out against it. That list includes James Cameron, Michael Bay, Kathryn Bigelow, Guillermo del Toro, Roland Emmerich, Antoine Fuqua, Todd Garner, Lawrence Gordon, Stephen Gyllenhaal, Gale Anne Hurd, Peter Jackson, Karyn Kusama, Jon Landau, Shawn Levy, Michael Mann, Bill Mechanic, Jamie Patricof, Todd Phillips, Brett Ratner, Robert Rodriguez, Adam Shankman, Gore Verbinski, and Robert Zemeckis. The full, un-edited open letter is below:

Peter Jackson and his team on The Hobbit are about to do something no major production has done to date: give you, the fans, unprecedented access into the production process. Most impressively, you’ll be seeing it as it happens. It makes us wonder what will be left when the DVD comes out, but right now we’re not worried about that. For now it’s a nice little treat for Hobbit fans to get a look inside the process. This might be the neatest film-related thing that will happen on the web this year.

James Cameron is always on the brink of revolution. Really, the dude needs to take a breather. At this year’s CinemaCon, the tech-centric director couldn’t shut up about 3D, faster frame rates and improved camera systems while everyone around him was salivating for a detail or two on his plans for the Avatar sequels. Forget that — there are shutter speeds to be discussed! We’re all about Peter Jackson hyping The Hobbit shooting 48 fps on RED digital 3D and legendary effects guru Douglas Trumbull heading back to directing with a tech-first approach, but at some point, isn’t the equipment standing in the way of great storytelling? We’ll give the benefit of the doubt to these three men, but whether any of their advancements are really “the future of movies,” won’t be known for a few years. Unfortunately, just because you’re brilliant and you say something is awesome…doesn’t mean it’s awesome. Here’s a look back at some of the other “game-changing” inventions that were supposed to change the way we watch movies, but never really picked up steam.

“We have decided how sad it is for others that they cannot appreciate our genius.” In 1954, a murder is committed by two girls who have formed a deadly friendship. The movie opens with the pair running for help while Pauline’s mother lies on a garden path, her head smashed in. Juliet Hume and Pauline Parker became each other’s entire world almost from the time they met when Juliet moved to Christchurch, New Zealand. The two girls, both outsiders, are obsessed with singer Mario Lanza and attracted to the dangerous Third Man character played by Orson Wells. Hollywood is their Mecca. They retreat into a fantasy called the Fourth World fueled by their stories of the mythical kingdom Borovnia. In Borovnia they are royalty, living with the figures in their imaginations. In the Fourth World their favorite movie actors are worshiped as saints.

What is Movie News After Dark? It is a nightly movie news column dedicated to featuring painfully overtread characters from the part of the Marvel universe owned (cinematically, at least) by the 20th Century Fox corporation. It might as well be called X-Men After Dark. Hmm… maybe Fox will buy some sponsorship rights. They need all the help they can get after X-Men Origins: Wolverine. “A good Wolverine film could be an amazing thing.” Duncan Jones said this mere days before he confirmed that he will take a meeting with 20th Century Fox about the possibility of directing The Wolverine, taking a director’s chair left empty by the departure of Darren Aronofsky. As geek cred goes, Jones has perhaps as much as anyone working right now following Moon and Source Code, and he’s smart enough to pull it off. Here’s hoping the project is a good fit and that Fox makes the right call.

The production company behind the upcoming JRR Tolkien adaptation The Hobbit has announced that principle photography will start for the film on March 21. This much anticipated prequel to the Lord of the Rings film series has had its fair share of highly publicized problems and delays, most recently because of director Peter Jackson’s guts erupting. Despite all of the turmoil, Jackson seems to still be optimistic. He was quoted as saying, “Despite some delays we are fully back on track and very excited to get started.” I would have probably been more like, “Despite some sort of crazy curse that’s been put on this project there is still a lot of money riding on us getting it done, so I am forced to soldier ahead. Pray for me.” But I guess that’s why Jackson gets paid the big bucks. While The Hobbit is a single story coming from a single book, the film adaptation will be divided into two chapters. They will be shot simultaneously but released in theaters separately. The target date for the first is December 2012 with the second coming a year later in December 2013. God willing everything will go well from this point forward and we’ll all get to bask in the glory of more big-screen Middle Earth. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go put on my elf ears and start getting excited. Source: coming soon

With every week that passes, it feels like things just keep getting better and better around here. It’s becoming increasingly easy to put this very column together. New writers and very soon, we’ll have some new columns to tout. There’s a reason why the tagline “The Cure for the Common Movie Blog” now graces our homepage. Because if we’re anything around here, it’s uncommon. And you can find out why with the links that I’ve strategically placed after the jump. It’s all part of a little game I like to call The Week That Was.

It’s just been announced that Saoirse Ronan will work with Peter Jackson again. This time, of course, it’s for The Hobbit. She’s played a dead rape victim, a young girl trained to kill, and now she’ll play some sort of fantasy creature from Middle Earth. According to an interview with the Irish Film and Television Network (that Coming Soon was nice enough to find), casting director Ros Hubbard confirmed Ronan’s involvement as well as the hiring of Aidan Turner (Being Human) to play Kili (a dwarf) and James Nesbitt to play Bofur (another dwarf). So who will Ronan play? Good question, and I’ve got a good guess. Or two.

Peter Jackson was reportedly admitted into Wellington Hospital after experiencing stomach pains in New Zealand while location scouting for The Hobbit. After being admitted Jackson underwent surgery to repair a perforated ulcer. Apparently a perforated ulcer is when a stomach ulcer completely burns through your stomach lining and all of the acid and stuff inside is able to leak out into your guts. Yikes. That sounds pretty horrible.

It was only a matter of time before the major pieces of the puzzle fell into place. We’ve watched as other actors have signed onto the Peter Jackson-directed The Hobbit (even some that don’t quite make sense), but we’ve been waiting on a handful of names before heaving a sigh of relief. At least a smaller version of that sigh can be let loose because Andy Serkis is officially back as Gollum (the book/film’s version of The Riddler), and Ian McKellen is back as Gandalf. The only hold out at this point is Christopher Lee who (after his almost insultingly cheap appearance in Season of the Witch) would make the circle complete. Rejoice!

Like a wet dog clamoring out of a bath it didn’t want, MGM is still shaking off the slightly soapy remnants of its bankruptcy. The collaboration born of necessity between MGM and Warners seems like a far cry from 2007 when New Line and MGM were co-financing with Fox handling distribution to the world outside of North America. But here we are. Warners is officially handling world-wide distribution for The Hobbit films. The good news is that the bumpy road to get to the bumpy road of filmmaking is over, and the cameras can roll. The video game arm of Warners, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, also has the rights to develop a video game based on the property.

The hype about The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is based around three things. One, this sort of action adventure is perfect for Steven Spielberg in an Amblin sort of way. Two, the comic is about as big as anything coming out of Belgium has any right to be besides waffles. Three, it’s a scientific fact that people love movies with ten-word titles. Up until now, it’s all been hype because little is known about the project except who’s starring in it, the story line, that it’s mo-cap, and another book or so of comments from Spielberg and Jackson about the project. However, we haven’t seen anything from it until today. Tintin, meet the world. The world, meet Tintin.

Once upon a time, it was Harry Potter, The Doctor, and that guy who helped out Idi Amin that were rumored for the main role in The Hobbit. Those names have all fallen away to the history books only to leave the true Bilbo Baggins – Martin Freeman. Freeman was first propelled to our cultural conscious in the original version of The Office and since then has nakedly thrust himself in Love, Actually and carried a towel hitchhiking across the Galaxy. We reported last month that he was possibly out of the picture because of a scheduling conflict, but then possibly back in again, and it looks officially to be the latter.