When the second and third installments of the Hobbit trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug (out Dec. 13, 2013) and There and Back Again (out July 18, 2014), arrive in theaters, we’ll encounter some familiar faces as well as some new ones as Bilbo and the dwarves continue their perilous journey to the Lonely Mountain, home of the dragon Smaug. One familiar face will be Orlando Bloom’s elf Legolas (pictured here in a shot from There and Back Again – click to enlarge), a major character in the Rings trilogy but one not mentioned in the Hobbit book.

So what is he doing in these films? “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. Conferring with Legolas is one of the Hobbit trilogy’s major new faces: the heroic human Laketown warrior Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans). “Bard is an interesting character, but [in the book] he’s kind of a random character who comes in after the fact,” says screenwriter and producer Philippa Boyens. “We take more time introducing him. We know from what follows that he was a father, so we [explore] that. I don’t think we take liberties, because it’s all there in the storytelling.”

滬江娛樂(lè)：由彼得·杰克遜導(dǎo)演的《魔戒》前傳《霍比特人1：意外旅程》本月14號(hào)才在北美正式上映，《娛樂(lè)周刊》今日曝光了將于2014年暑期上映的《霍比特人3：去而復(fù)歸》的首張劇照。奧蘭多·布魯姆飾演的精靈王子萊格拉斯驚艷亮相，身旁是盧克·伊萬(wàn)斯飾演的巴德。在《霍比特人1》中精靈王子的父親——瑟蘭迪爾 (Elven King Thranduil)將有重要戲份，他囚禁比爾伯·巴金斯和其他小矮人們，因?yàn)樗麄冋`闖進(jìn)了他的地盤。該角色由曾出演《靈指神探》、《墜入》的李·佩斯飾演，扮相英氣逼人，至于精靈王子為什么會(huì)帥氣地出現(xiàn)在《霍比特人》中，據(jù)主創(chuàng)解釋，因?yàn)榫`們是不朽的，所以兩人都很俊美是可以理解的。

《霍比特人》由新線公司和米高梅公司共同擁有，其中新線公司負(fù)責(zé)制作，母公司華納兄弟負(fù)責(zé)影片的全球發(fā)行，而電視方面的版權(quán)則歸米高梅公司。根據(jù)華納的最新計(jì)劃，三部曲的剩下兩部《霍比特人2：史矛革荒漠》與《霍比特人3：去而復(fù)歸》將分別與2013年12月13日和2014年7月18日亮相北美院線。這三部影片均使用3D EPIC Digital Cameras攝影機(jī)拍攝，并采用了每秒48幀的高頻新技術(shù)拍攝，期望帶給觀眾更加流暢逼真的視覺(jué)體驗(yàn)。?