Hobbit Will Premiere in November

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson has announced that his new film, a 3-D extravaganza based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, will take place in New Zealand on November 28th, a full two weeks before the general release of the film in mid-December.

Jackson has opted to tell the Hobbit story in two parts, with both set roughly 60 years before the action in The Lord of the Rings. In the first, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Bilbo Baggins tries to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor from the dragon, Smaug.

The second part, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, will be released one year after the first, in December 2013.