By Update: EW did things a bit backwards they’ve released an image from the second film The Desolation of Smaug after releasing the image from the third film. As you can see below, it confirms the existence of gold in the film.
Entertainment Weekly was all up in The Hobbit recently and not only gave out information on the upcoming film, but the second and third ones as well. Included in that was the first image from the the third film, The Hobbit: There and Back Again. As you can see it looks a lot like images from every other Lord of the Rings movie, especially since this one includes Legolas (Orlando Bloom). The other chap with him in the photo is Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans).
If you’re wondering what the heck Logolas is doing in the films since he’s never mentioned in the book Peter Jackson explains: “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.” I suppose that makes sense, especially when you need to make three movies out of one short book.
In that vein the producers also say they’ve fleshed Bard out a lot more too. Should be interesting to see if Tolkein fans get up in arms over any changes made in order to make the films deeper.
[EW, via Collider]