In een redelijk aardig interview met Total Film heeft Peter Jackson zich uitgelaten over de verschillen tussen The Hobbit tweeluik en de LOTR trilogie. Hij vertelt onder meer dat we duidelijke verschillen gaan zien, maar dat hij ernaar streeft om de LOTR sfeer te behouden. Ook zegt Jackson dat we de visie van de vertrokken regisseur Guillermo del Toro terug gaan zien.

Peter Jackson over het verschil tussen The Hobbit en LOTR trilogie: "The Hobbit is very much a children's book and The Lord of the Rings is something else; it's not really aimed at children at all. I realized the characters of the dwarves are the difference. Their energy and disdain of anything politically correct brings a new kind of spirit to it. And that's why I thought, OK, this could be fun!"

Op de vraag of Jackson problemen heeft met de "screentime" van de vele personages zegt hij: "That was something I worried about. I imagined 13 guys with long hair and beards and I thought, 'How are we ever going to know which dwarf is which? It's an ensemble from hell really. I thought nine members of the Fellowship was a problem; but here, with Bilbo and Gandalf, we've got 15. It's working out fine though. The dwarves give it a kind of childish, comedic quality that gives us a very different tone from The Lord of the Rings."

Jackson weet dat er enkele verschillen zijn tussen The Hobbit en LOTR. Hij streeft er echter naar om dezelfde sfeer over te brengen zoals we die kennen uit de recordbrekende LOTR trilogie. Jackson: "I want it to seem like we've gone back on location into Middle-earth; that these two movies feel like they belong at the beginning of the other three. We're the same filmmakers going into the same world."

Volgens Total Film is de visie van de vertrokken regisseur Guillermo del Toro terug te vinden in The Hobbit tweeluik. "films do retain some aspects del Toro's style and DNA, but that they have largely been overshadowed by Jackson's own attempts to replicate his approach to The Lord of the Rings ten years ago"

Jackson's vrouw Fran Walsh en co-schrijver van het script zegt dat de tweede film The Hobbit: There and Back Again zich focust op "oorlog, waanzin en draken woede": "We always saw The Hobbit more in the golden light of a fairytale. It's more playful. But by the time you get to the end, Tolkien is writing himself into that place where he can begin that epic journey of writing LOTR, which took, as he put it, his life's blood. All those heavier, darker themes which are so prevalent in the later trilogy start to come into play."

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey draait vanaf 14 december 2012 in de filmtheaters. Het slotstuk begint op 13 december 2013. Hieronder nogmaals de teaser trailer: