With The Hobbit sitting comfortably in the number one slot this weekend, four films are poised to compete for the box-office bucks necessary to knock it from the throne. All of which makes it unlikely that Gandalf and his crew won’t still be king of the Misty Mountain next weekend, too.

But if any the movies opening this week might threaten the dwarves and their cinematic gold, Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher is the likeliest contender.

The gritty, action-thriller Jack Reacher is named for the title character in a long-running series of adventures by novelist Lee Child. A kind of modern-day, high-functioning Rambo, Reacher is an ex-soldier with no real roots in the world, traveling from city to city as he’s constantly pulled back into the world of American espionage.

Written and directed by the great Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects, Way of the Gun), Jack Reacher sees Tom Cruise cast in a role that’s poised to replace the dying Bourne franchise in the category of Movies-Named-After-Their-Heroes. A grounded, down-and-dirty actioner, Jack Reacherhas more than a dozen published novels to draw from for future sequels.

Less grounded – and certainly less dirty – the epic, FX-driven fantasy The Hobbit continues its quest through Middle Earth, having pocketed well over a $100 million internationally in just its first week of release. Reuniting several of the characters from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit tells the story of Bilbo Baggins long before the formation of the legendary Fellowship that swept away his beloved Frodo.

Celebuzz imagines that with four new films competing to vote-split the weekend, The Hobbit will remain in the top spot with Jack Reacher firmly in second place. Of course, that’s assuming that families don’t flock to see Pixar’s original Monsters, Inc. film in three all-new dimensions.

Which will you see this weekend – The Hobbit or Jack Reacher? Watch the Jack Reacher trailer, and then let us know which film you’re most interested in — and why — in the comments below!

Ever since Peter Jackson first announced that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey would be shot in 3D with cameras recording at a speed of 48 frames a second, pundits have analyzed how much his film might impact Hollywood as a whole.

But Visual Effects Supervisor Joe Letteri, who previously worked on groundbreaking films from Star Wars to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, says that the techniques Jackson uses will reverberate in many areas of the industry.

In the past, when someone made a breakthrough like that, it would be because you had this sort of ‘a-ha! Moment,” Letteri told Celebuzz. “[Here,] there are breakthroughs in every area.”

Letteri, who spoke to Celebuzz at the New York press day for The Hobbit, said that the breakthroughs came as a result of numerous challenges the filmmakers faced in bringing J.R.R. Tolkien’s source material to life.

“You’re not able to cheat any more when you’re shooting in stereo,” he said. (It just doesn’t work in movies like this, especially when the camera is moving around everywhere.” (By comparison, in the Lord of the Rings films Jackson was able to used forced perspective, where actors would be placed at different distances within the frame to simulate the correct sizes for different species.)

“We had to make two cameras work in synchronization in two different scales on two different stages simultaneously. That was one of the biggest challenges that brought 3D to it that was new.”

Letteri also said that the choice to shoot at 48 fps not just gave them multiple challenges, but produced multiple results, specifically for folks paying to see the film in theaters.

“We found that 48 frames was a good compromise in that it really allowed us to mitigate a lot of the motion artifacts that are a problem when people are viewing in stereo,” Letteri said. “But [we could] still produce the work without having to change too much of the pipeline downstream, meaning what we would need to do to make other versions of the film for release, like the 24 frame stereo and 24 frame not stereo.

“So now I think you have about four different choices as a viewer about how you want to view the film.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens in theaters nationwide December 14, 2012. Watch the film’s theatrical trailer below, and let us know how you watched the film in the comments section!

Although they were a massive gamble at the time, the Lord of the Rings films have become synonymous with big-screen, epic storytelling. Their serious, sweeping take on fantasy filmmaking was something that was not simply commercially successful, but artistically credible, winning awards and legitimizing genre movies more than ever before.

In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Adventure, however, writer-director Peter Jackson maintains the massive scope of its predecessors, but offers audiences a (slightly) more light-hearted adventure, anchored by Martin Freeman’s amazing performance as reluctant Hobbit hero Bilbo Baggins.

Freeman say down with Celebuzz at the film’s New York press day to discuss the challenges of recreating the magic of the first three films, and then finding a tone that would be appropriately fun after the operatic gravitas of the Lord of the Rings series.

Celebuzz: Peter Jackson talked about how you had to juggle your schedule in order to do the movie, but did you have any trepidation about taking on something this enormous and what would be such a commitment?

Martin Freeman: Every time I say it, it sounds like I’m now questioning it, [but] I didn’t feel it, and I am just checking to see if that’s true and it is true. Because I think maybe if I had been in love with The Hobbit since I was 11 then I might have thought that, but I didn’t grow up as a Hobbit child so I wasn’t carrying that weight of that stuff myself. It felt very freeing for me actually, I can get stressed and anxious about almost everything else in life, but not work, because it’s the thing that I feel most confident about. It’s the thing that I really feel I know what I’m doing. But for this kind of thing, also because Pete had made it so clear that they wanted me, and they were so pro me, that’s relaxing. It kind of makes you kind of feel like, all right — I’m wanted, you know. You didn’t have that sort of actors thing, sometimes thinking “I don’t even think this guy digs me very much.” Pete’s not a very effusive person — he’s not a gusher at all — so when he says something, you sort of trust that he means it. So I didn’t really feel pressured, no; I felt enjoyment.

CB: What was the most important thing for you as you’re coming into portray this younger version of the character Ian Holm played? Was there anything that you specifically drew upon or were you able to create a character for yourself out of whole cloth?

MF: Tolkien created the character, and then Philippa [Boyens], Fran [Walsh] and Pete adapt that for the screenplay, and then I come and do what I’m going to do, and mixed in with that is what Ian Holm did twelve years ago. I obviously re-watched the films more closely this time and re-watched Ian Holm more closely this time. I find it always very hard to talk about because it’s easy to be glib and English and just kind of say, “Well, I’ll just learn my lines and don’t bump into furniture,” but that’s not quite true, you know. But at the same time, I didn’t go and live in a hole in the ground for six months to prepare. It’s more sort of subtle and invisible than that. A lot of work you do, you just do immediately without thinking, well, this will look good in Chapter Three of my biography. It’s like sex — it’s kind of difficult to talk about, do you know what I mean? When you actually get down to it, you kind of go, well, either feels right or doesn’t.

Read the script is what I do, and again that might sound glib, but all the clues should be in there. Everything should be in there. But we’re not literally making the novel, we have to be making the screenplay of it. So I treat that as my bible. I would sometimes go back to the book — but not as often as Ian McKellen did. McKellen always had the book in his hand — always. Reading the script, I’m a big believer in that and learning lines. That’s sounding more glib by the minute! But it’s true, man; it’s true. I think a lot of the time you can talk yourself around trying to win yourself a Nobel Prize for what you did or didn’t do. I don’t give a fuck what you did or didn’t do. I don’t care apart from what I’m watching on the screen. And if you get there by living in a dust bin, great, and if you get there by kind of doing the crossword and then coming up and doing it, I don’t give a shit. I didn’t do either.

CB: Talk about your collaboration with Peter because this material is lighter than the first three films, but it’s not purely comical. Or did you merely offer 40 versions and leave it to them to find the tone in the editing room?

MF: There was a lot of that, just giving choices. I mean, some of them will be right and some of them won’t be, and I kind of don’t know what they’ll be until they come out – that sort of thing. I know super-objectives and all that — I know what area we’re in, so I wouldn’t go completely bananas, but within the tunnel of where we’re at there are still 20 different ways to do it. I know he appreciated that choice and I like giving that choice. So, I think a lot of it is just down to taste and good casting. He trusted that I’ve got some comedy chops. But I’m not a standup, I’m an actor, who can be funny when called on. But yeah, that’s Bilbo — he is a lighter character, it’s actually true. And there were periods in the early part of filming where I know I sort of felt a bit almost envious. I realized that I wanted to be in Lord of the Rings, you know what I mean?

I was always aching; the thing that I was chomping at the bit about was, when’s this going to fucking get dark? Because there were times when I was like, I don’t want to keep playing light. I don’t want to keep playing, excuse me, sort of fluffier Bilbo. And I think in my head, I probably had Elijah [in mind]. He wasn’t really being funny, [though]. And Peter reminded me Frodo and Bilbo are different people, and this is a different film. It’s a film that your kids are going to want to come and see, and will for hopefully decades to come. But I’m usually drawn to darker choices, believe it or not. I think once you’ve established that you can be funny, all I want to fucking do is then not make them laugh ever again — I’m just going to take the choices that are going not make people smile.

But at the same time, fuck it. I’m quite a whore and I quite like playing comedy when necessary, and that will also be a natural choice for me; I do like being funny. I like other people being funny and I like laughing. So those dual things are both quite immediate to me. I like being funny but also like being serious.

CB: If the clues should all be in the script, at what point do you feel like you know what a character is? Do you have to know the first day shooting, or is it seeing what you did when they put the final product together and going, “Oh, that’s not really what I had in mind the entire time, but it’s cohesive.”

MF: I think you can intellectually think what the character is by the first day, but acting is not an intellectual exercise. It’s more akin to sports actually. It’s like a sort of sport with your brain. It’s not a thinking, you have to do it. And every actor knows that I’ve got it right in my head, but when it comes out it’s just not coming out right. So I had to find Bilbo in the moments with Gollum, which is a perfect place to try to find him because it’s him in a life-and-death situation, which I found was the best place to find him.

CB: Ultimately, what do you feel like was maybe sort of the biggest challenge for you making this? Was there something that demanded use of a skill set that you had never really exercised before?

MF: I think it was the stamina more than anything, actually. I think it was just the mental stamina of just doing something for 18 months. I have never done that before. And 18 months as far away from home as you can possibly be — cue more Bilbo parallels (laughs). But I think for most people, people want to be in their house, they want to be in their garden at some point, and just keeping a focus and keeping your mind set on this, essentially on a character, when I would never have fucking dreamed that I’m carrying a film. I’m not carrying the film, but the character is taking you through the film. It has to be this person taking you through. So just keeping focused on that for that length of time, I have never done before, and will probably never do again, because these films don’t come along very often. So that was the biggest challenge for me.

Watch the theatrical trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey below. And let us know what you think of Freeman’s performance in the comments section after it opens December 14!

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey premiered last night in New York City, but the film was certainly not the only interesting story told at the event.

Jokesters Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis made their rounds on the red carpet at the Ziegfeld Theater to promote their new flick, and they didn’t hold back about their experiences — including piercings and drinking — on set of the first of three installments of the Hobbit series.

Rumored that tattoos may have been involved, Freeman responded by saying, “We got piercings.”

He continued, “We got Prince Alberts” — Prince Albert is a private male piercing if that explains enough…

Pointing toward’s Serkis’ chest, the Love Actually star, 41, said “I think that was Prince Edward,” – inferring that there could have been other piercings.

The English duo may have been kidding around about their private piercings, but their affection towards each other was no secret – nothing short of laughter and chumminess.

But their experiences on set may have varied — Freeman said that he wasn’t involved in any drinking, but 13 Going on 30′s Sarkis, 48, claimed that he had “many drunken nights.”

Watch the video above to see more of their comedic interview. What do you think was true and what was a joke? Weigh in below.

Peter Jackson returns to Middle Earth and to his homeland of New Zealand – a country that appears one parliamentary vote away from calling itself TolkienLand – for the often exciting, if equally silly, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

The first in a three-film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s precursor to Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit presents a sizeable risk for the famed director. Not only is the epic adventure filmed in 48 frames-per-second – a technique that lends the film a bizarrely sped-up, BBC, telenovela appearance – it begs immediate comparison to Jackson’s first masterpiece go-around with Frodo and the Fellowship.

Critics have already begun to weigh in on this enjoyable, yet decidedly uneven, journey, and in the end, after nearly twenty cinematic hours spent in Middle Earth, Jackson might very well borrow the title of Bilbo Baggins’ biography for his own: “There and Back Again.” But critics and audiences alike will provide the subtitle: “Was it worth it?”

Let’s find out…

Todd Gilchrist, Celebuzz

“A briskly engaging adventure shrouded in superfluous detail, an unhurried pace though also, yes, admittedly, technical virtuosity, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is an accomplished if unexciting first chapter in the preamble to his Oscar-winning film series.”

Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter

“Spending nearly three hours of screen time to visually represent every comma, period and semicolon in the first six chapters of the perennially popular 19-chapter book, Jackson and his colleagues have created a purist’s delight…In pure movie terms, however, it’s also a bit of a slog, with an inordinate amount of exposition and lack of strong forward movement.”

Shawn Adler, Movieline

“Like Bilbo reflecting on his long path from The Shire and what it means to fight for a place to call your own, however, returning to Middle Earth feels right. And if it doesn’t quite soar as high in transformative joy or ecstasy as we thought it might… it’s still home.

Devin Faraci, Badass Digest

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is an enormously frustrating film. At times it’s absolutely wonderful and delightful and magical, bringing in a sense of whimsy and wonder missing from the original Lord of the Rings trilogy. But it’s also oddly paced and way too long; it takes the film almost 45 minutes to get going, and once it does it keeps stopping for scenes that feel like blueprints for theme park rides and video games.”

Peter Debruge, Variety

“The Hobbit alternately rewards and abuses auds’ appetite for all things Middle-earth. While Peter Jackson’s prequel to The Lord of the Rings delivers more of what made his earlier trilogy so compelling — colorful characters on an epic quest amid stunning New Zealand scenery — it doesn’t offer nearly enough novelty to justify the three-film, nine-hour treatment, at least on the basis of this overlong first installment.”

Rodrigo Perez, IndieWire

“The last two acts of The Hobbit are simply a non-stop action-adventure rollercoaster that is just as engaging and winning as anything in the director’s previous trilogy. As epic, grandiose, and emotionally appealing as the previous pictures, The Hobbit doesn’t move far from the mold, but it’s a thrilling ride that’s one of the most enjoyable, exciting and engaging tentpoles of the year.”

Jordan Hoffman, ScreenCrush

“We may not be able to fully analyze ‘The Hobbit’ until all three chapters are in. Nevertheless here we are and An Unexpected Journey does, indeed, have a lot going for it. It is also saddled with tangents, jabberjaw scenes that never end and far too many beats whose sole function is to remind you how much you love the original Lord of the Rings films.”

Will you see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey when it opens in theaters? Sound off in the comments, and to tide you over, watch the film’s trailer on Celebuzz!

Although three Lord of the Rings Extended Editions, a three-plus-hour King Kong remake and an interminable adaptation of The Lovely Bones certainly evidenced Peter Jackson’s problem with efficiency, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey achieves new heights of overlong-ness in the director’s expansive canon.

Mind you, I’m a fan of almost all of his films – save Lovely Bones – and considered longer versions of The Two Towers and Return of the King improvements over their theatrical counterparts. But there is simply no need whatsoever for An Unexpected Journey to run two hours and forty minutes, no matter how much one loves J.R.R. Tolkien’s source material.

A briskly engaging adventure shrouded in superfluous detail, an unhurried pace though also, yes, admittedly, technical virtuosity, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is an accomplished if unexciting first chapter in the preamble to his Oscar-winning film series.

Opening with an extended flashback in which the dwarves of Middle Earth are excommunicated from Lonely Mountain by the dragon Smaug, the film chronicles Bilbo Baggins’ (Martin Freeman) participation in helping them begin to reclaim their homeland. Baggins reluctantly agrees to join the Dwarves’ company after Gandalf (Ian McKellen) recruits him, and they soon find themselves battling goblins and orcs across a vast pastoral landscape, eventually arriving at the lair of a mysterious creature named Gollum (Andy Serkis) whose prize possession – a ring – becomes the possible saving grace for a group in dire straits.

It’s been just long enough since I watched the first three Lord of the Rings movies for me to not be certain whether or not my enthusiasm is as strong as when they were first released. But whether or not “growing up” or getting some distance from the franchise has anything to do with it, The Hobbit fails on an immediate level to captivate in the same way as its predecessors. And key to this problem is the fact that there are yet two more movies to come, without (at least evidenced by An Unexpected Journey) any indication that much story still exists to be told.

In particular, the early scenes in the film drag, a conspicuous indicator that the appendices – or bonus footage to be added to Extended Editions later – offer little to anyone but hardcore fans. As if attempting to outdo the 45-minute wedding sequence in The Deer Hunter, Jackson stages a banquet with the dwarves at Bilbo’s house that is absurdly long without offering anything significant in terms of story – at least not that couldn’t have been accomplished in less than half the same time.

Loyalty to source material only means something if it serves he emotional substance or narrative momentum of the story, and long scenes of dwarves singing, and eating, and eating, and signing, provide none of that. Especially since – crucially – the dwarves, while amusing, are never as distinctive as the members of the Fellowship of the Ring, and we never come to care about them individually even given all of this footage that’s meant to introduce us to them.

That said, the action scenes are as breathless and exhilarating as anything Jackson has previously shot, and they escalate in gripping if decidedly familiar ways. He is so intimately familiar with the source material – perhaps a shortcoming only when choosing what to excise – that he captures the nuances of relationships, spatial and emotional, without seeming to break a sweat. And though we don’t necessarily have that same sort of deep-rooted understanding of all of the characters by the end of the film, Jackson’s palpable affection for them encourages us to share in it, and we mostly do.

Technically, Jackson used the film as a testing ground for 48-frames-per-second projection, which he and James Cameron have heralded as the next great innovation in filmmaking. But as of yet, its effectiveness remains to be seen: while the images are clearer and more stable – especially watching 3D photography – they have an almost super-real clarity that seems too fast, like a DVD player on 1.5x speed or an HDTV with its TruMotion setting amped up to dizzying levels.

I admit that I’m unclear what the long-term benefits are for using this sort of technology, although I don’t presume there are none. But I can’t recommend 48fps presentation as superior to standard 24fps exhibition, at least as it is, and one can only hope that its purpose – and its usage – will improve with time.

Overall, The Hobbit is not a poorly-made movie – in fact, quite the opposite. But it’s a two-hour story in a two-hour-and-forty-minute story’s body, and anyone who’s not consumed copious amounts of Tolkien kool-aid seems likely to question why they’re watching so much story that seems so unimportant, and for so long. Ultimately, An Unexpected Journey only fails in that it doesn’t live up to its title – every expectation is filled, and then some – but for anyone with any hope that these films could live up to their predecessors, The Hobbit is a fine start to what will surely be a series that proves fully satisfying to fans.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is almost here — but first, the highly-anticipated film’s TV spot is coming to small screens.

Between sweeping shots of the fantastical Middle-earth and action-packed fight sequences, the 30-second spot introduces J.R.R. Tolkien‘s literary tale of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), a once-solitary hobbit who is reluctantly swept into an epic quest with dwarves to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor.

The movie — starring Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett and Elijah Wood alongside Freeman — will be the first of three Hobbit films from director Peter Jackson.

The franchise is set in the fictional realm of Middle-earth 60 years before The Lord of the Rings, which Jackson and his film-making team adapted for the big screen in the Oscar-winning blockbuster trilogy.

Though The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey doesn’t hit theaters until Dec. 14, the world is already gearing up for the abundance of fanfare. American dinner chain Denny’s is launching a Middle-earth-inspired menu, serving up dishes like “Gandalf’s Gobble Melt” and “Hobbit Harvest Pies.” And in New Zealand, the Hobbit characters will adorn commemorative coins, due out on Nov. 1.

The second and third films, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Hobbit: There and Back Again, are set for release Decemeber 13, 2013, and July 18, 2014, respectively. Watch the trailer for Jackson’s newest tale above.

Attention, Hobbit fans: Just in case you weren’t already counting down the days until The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which opens December 14, new stills from the movie have surfaced, and all the warm and fuzzy memories of The Lord of the Rings are coming back.

In the new snaps (posted at Brazilian site Cine Marcado) from the first installment of Peter Jackson‘s three-part J.R.R. Tolkien prequel, it looks like old home week in Middle-earth, with Elijah Wood and Sir Ian McKellen recreating some iconic moments from the blockbuster, Oscar-winning trilogy of a decade ago. Indeed, Wood’s Frodo looks just the same — has the actor aged at all since he filmed the initial trliogy back in 1999 and 2000?

What else do the new photos tell us about the ‘Hobbit’ trilogy?

McKellen actually looks a tad younger — Gandalf the Grey’s beard is not so grey yet — which makes sense, since the Hobbit adventure takes place 60 years before the events in The Lord of the Rings. (Though 60 years is an eye-blink in the lifespan of a wizard.)

And then there’s Martin Freeman, as the young Bilbo Baggins (played as an ancient hobbit by Ian Holm in The Lord of the Rings). Unlike the wily, headstrong Bilbo played by Holm, the young Bilbo is a quiet homebody who, through Gandalf’s intervention, becomes an unlikely, sword-wielding adventurer. Freeman’s face seems to capture the fish-out-of-water puzzlement and fear that characterize Bilbo throughout the surprise quest hinted at in the new movie’s title.

How did Jackson expand Tolkien’s relatively slender novel The Hobbit into three movies?

As is apparent from these new pictures, there’s a lot of the new trilogy that takes place in Frodo’s day — decades after Bilbo’s adventure. It’s been suggested that, as a framing device, Bilbo spends much screen time recounting his story to young Frodo, igniting in him the interest in exploring the world beyond the Shire that blossoms in The Lord of the Rings.

What do you think? Do these stills make you long to return to Middle-earth? Let us know in the comments below.