15 Things That Almost Completely Changed The Hobbit Trilogy

13. It Was Almost An Awful Lot Longer

The idea that The Hobbit could be extended to more than one fairly meagre film was initially somewhat difficult to take, but even more unthinkably, Peter Jackson had to cut a massive amount of filmed material to slim the running times down. The first film had 13 minutes added to the Extended cut when it landed on blu-ray, and the Desolation Of Smaug had an extra 25 minutes, including the sequence focused on Thrain's rescue and death. Jackson has already also admitted that the Battle Of The Five Armies extended cut will be around 30 minutes longer, which will presumably include the ice river chase scene that was included in the trailer but didn't make it into the cinematic cut. So altogether that's more than an hour of footage added after the film came out of cinemas. That's some seriously harsh editing.