It’s so close now that I can virtually smell the Shire! Peter Jackson’s long awaited big screen adaptation of The Hobbit begins filming on 21st of this month, most of the casting is now complete, and it looks like the team have just decided on what to call the two films in cinematic miniseries!

Middle Earth-obsessed fan site, The One Ring are reporting that New Line Cinema have registered two film names, indicating that we may now have subtitles for the two Hobbit movies. With The Lord of the Rings we had The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King, names given to the three volumes by J.R.R. Tolkien, however there were no such names given to The Hobbit, which appeared in print as one unified story. This means that someone, somewhere has had to assign some suitably Tolkien-esque titles to the project, which has been split into two films and expanded to include some of the appendices of The Lord of the Rings.

Ready for the titles? Drum roll please….

The Hobbit: There and Back Again

The Hobbit: An/The Unexpected Journey

Ta-daa! So what do we think Hobbit fans? Personally I think the titles capture quite nicely the kind of modest understatement of the small folk, but it’s worth baring in mind that at this point, these names have not been confirmed by any official source. I can’t imagine that will stop them from appearing on fan made posters for the next six months though…

Source: The One Ring.