Director Peter Jackson has some good and some bad news. The good news is that there”s a production video for “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” that shows plenty of behind-the-scenes footage, including up-close looks at the Lake Town sets, brief interviews with Orlando Bloom, Evangeline Lilly and Luke Evans, and … Dwarf aerobics.
But now the bad news. “The Hobbit” won”t be coming to Comic-Con International later this month.
“A couple of days ago I told Warners that I just really wasn”t ready to present anything of ‘The Desolation of Smaug’ at Comic-Con this year,” Jackson says in the video”s introduction. “The reasons for that are – well, there”s several, really: We”re still shooting, and we”re gonna be shooting through the period of Comic-Con, so we looked at what actors we could send, y”know, to make a really cool panel, there wasn”t really anybody available. I can”t go. So, faced with that, the prospect was then, y”know, record some messages, have a really cool sizzle reel, but y”know the problem is I”m so busy shooting, working six days a week trying to get these pick-ups done, that every hour that I spend focusing on a really great reel for Comic-Con – and it would have to be great – would be hours spent away from the vital job of making the second and third ‘Hobbit’ films as cool as they can possibly be.”
“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” opens Dec. 13. “The Hobbit: There and Back Again” arrives Dec. 17, 2014.