Source: Empire | Posted By: Dan Geer

Ever since Peter Jackson’s plan for adapting J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit into a film was revealed as being more than one film, we all wondered if it was even necessary. After all, it’s only one book instead of three, and written with a younger audience in mind than what The Lord of the Rings was intended for. But once we were informed that Jackson and company would be drawing from the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings to flesh out the story, things made a whole lot more sense.

However, when the announcement came earlier this year that Jackson’s two-film adaptation of The Hobbit was being turned into a trilogy, fans wondered if this adaptation will now end up becoming very bloated, and seem too exhausted by the time the third film comes to a conclusion. We were offered an explanation that there’s really more to draw from the Appendices than people think, but even that seemed like a stretch to some.

My initial theory was that, in order for this to work properly, the films would actually have to be shorter than any of The Lord of the Rings films, which is something that I think many people hadn’t even considered. As it turns out, this is basically the case, as the running time for the first film in the trilogy, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, has been revealed, and it is indeed somewhat shorter. Hit the jump to find out the running time!

Via Empire:

“It’s looking like it’s going to be about ten minutes shorter than Fellowship was,” explains Jackson. “So it’s going to be officially our shortest Middle-earth yet. I mean, Fellowship was just under three hours and this is about 2 hours 40 minutes at the moment.”

For clarification, Empire states that, while Jackson is referring to the film as it stands now, without credits and some unfinished effects shots, we can expect the actual finished film to be close to this length (minus the credits, of course).

While not as short as I was expecting, this is still going to help quite a bit in spreading out the story over the course of three films. Personally, my fears of this trilogy feeling bloating are subsiding more and more with each new reveal for the films. Hopefully, by summer 2014, we can all breathe peacefully after the credits role on the third film and rejoice that we have a whole new set of great Middle Earth films to enjoy.

Now, whether or not the Extended Editions of the films will feel bloated, that’s another topic entirely…

The Hobbit trilogy is directed by Peter Jackson, and written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be released December 14th of this year, followed by The Desolation of Smaug on December 13, 2013, and There and Back Again on July 18, 2014. The films star Martin Freeman, Cate Blanchett, Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Christopher Lee, Orlando Bloom, Richard Armitage, Ken Stott, Graham McTavish, William Kircher, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunter, Aidan Turner, Peter Hambleton, John Callen, Jed Brophy, Mark Hadlow, Adam Brown, Ian Holm, Lee Pace, Dean O’Gorman, Elijah Wood, Evangeline Lilly, Barry Humphries, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Sylvester McCoy.