Announced via chipper Facebook post from Peter Jackson, alongside a charming posterity picture of himself in front of a quintessential Lord of the Rings menagerie of fantastically colorful trees and a green screen, The Hobbit films have completed principal photography following “shoot day 266.” Production began in March of 2011, and today marks the point where its cast can begin wistfully pining again for the sixteen months they spent making movie magic in New Zealand, with their nostalgia generally proportional to their career’s stability going forward.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will open December 14 of this year in glorious 3D and inglorious 48 fps. As Jackson notes, we’ll be seeing it at Comic-Con later this month. (Shit, Comic-Con’s only a week from now!) The Hobbit: There and Back Again is likewise due December 13, 2013. I’d expect The Silmarillion: Music of the Ainur roughly in winter of 2021, directed by a yet grayer Jackson and featuring a nigh-corpselike Ian McKellen.
[via Collider]
