Peter Jackson ends The Hobbit trilogy

MANILA, Philippines - New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures’ The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies represents the culmination of director/co-writer/producer Peter Jackson’s 16-year journey to bring to life the richly-layered universe of Middle-Earth conjured nearly a century ago by J.R.R. Tolkien in his literary masterworks The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The Hobbit: There and Back Again was first published in 1937, having emerged from the revered author, poet, university professor and philologist’s imagination as bedtime stories for his children. In the 17 years that followed, Tolkien continued to develop, expand and enrich the complex mythology of Middle-Earth to produce its sprawling, apocalyptic conclusion, The Lord of the Rings. Collectively, the author’s towering modern myth has had a seismic impact on world culture, becoming among the best-selling novels ever written, and sparking the imaginations of generations of readers all over the world.

Among them was a teenaged Peter Jackson, who took his first dive into Middle-Earth while traveling by train across his native New Zealand — but it wouldn’t be his last. As early as 1995, the filmmaker explored the idea of adapting The Hobbit for the screen, hoping to then move on to adapt The Lord of the Rings.

To embody the iconic roles introduced in this earlier tale, the filmmakers assembled a core of gifted actors, including Martin Freeman as the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins, Richard Armitage as the Dwarf Lord Thorin Oakenshield, Luke Evans as Bard the Bowman, Evangeline Lilly as Silvan Elf Warrior Tauriel, Lee Pace as Elvenking Thranduil of the Woodland Realm, Billy Connolly as Dwarf General Dain Ironfoot of the Iron Hills and Benedict Cumberbatch breathing life into the trilogy’s iconic villains, the Dragon Smaug and the Dark Lord Sauron.

The new trilogy would also reunite the director with members of the celebrated cast of The Lord of the Rings films nearly a decade after their release, including Ian McKellen as the Wizard Gandalf the Grey; Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and Orlando Bloom as High Elves Galadriel, Elrond and Legolas, respectively; Christopher Lee as the Wizard Saruman the White; Ian Holm reprising his role as the older Bilbo Baggins; and Andy Serkis returning to his memorable incarnation of Gollum in the first film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, as well as serving as second unit director for the entire trilogy.

Opening on Dec. 12 in theaters and IMAX, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.