The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey doesn’t come out until December 14th, yet Entertainment Weekly has already snagged the first look at Orlando Bloom as Legolas in the third Hobbit movie, The Hobbit: There And Back Again. That third movie comes out July 18th, 2014, while the second movie (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug) comes out December 13th, 2013. More importantly, Legolas isn’t mentioned in The Hobbit book, so why is he back for another trilogy?
“He’s [elven king] Thranduil’s son, and Thranduil is one of the characters in The Hobbit, and because elves are immortal it makes sense Legolas would be part of the sequence in the Woodland Realm,” director Peter Jackson explains. [EW]
Okay, cool, but we still have to ask: how does he feel about his dad being the cool party elf everyone prefers? (Choosy drunks choose Thranduil.)
In addition, EW also posted the first picture from the second Hobbit movie, where we can see Bilbo doing his impersonation of Scrooge McDuck with Smaug’s treasure trove:
In other news, we also have a Hobbit parody The Daily What tipped us to. Chicago-based sketch groups Octavarius and Distract Chicago made this video compilation of things Gandalf, Thorin, and Bilbo are unlikely to say. Who knew Smashmouth was so popular in Middle Earth? And did you know “Shadowfax” is also the name of Gandalf’s pipe? He might have a problem.