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It is being rumored that the evil Sauron will return and battle the White Council in The Hobbit: There and Back Again.

Hit the jump to check out The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug character designs

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues had a solid debut this weekend, though it wasn't strong enough to take first place away from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Among the other new releases, American Hustle got off to a great start, while Saving Mr. Banks and Walking with Dinosaurs disappointed. Overall, it was a very good weekend at the box office—the Top 12 earned $137.3 million, which is up a whopping 37 percent from the same weekend last year. Unless all five Christmas Day releases bomb, the 2013 box office is now guaranteed to top last year's $10.84 billion record.

In the male-dominated realm of Middle Earth, only a few female characters are given a chance to shine - notably Liv Tyler's elf maiden Arwen and Cate Blanchett's elf queen Galadriel in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. When adapting Tolkein's prequel "The Hobbit" into three films, Jackson worked with producers to create a new character not featured in the original book. Unlike Tyler and Blanchett's characters, the elf warrior Tauriel, played by Evangeline Lilly, is not high-born - she is a working class 'Silvan' elf, who guards the Elven kingdom.

Before you visit theatres for the second installment of the film based on J.R.R. Tolkien's beloved "The Hobbit," brush up on your elvish and pack your "Baggins," because Tolkien Scholar Joseph Pearce is taking you on an extensive tour of the Catholic themes found in "the Hobbit" in a new hour-long special, "Bilbo's Journey!" Based on his popular book, Pearce takes you far beyond the surface of this classic tale's plot, and delves deep into a symbolic journey that truly finds the middle ground between Middle Earth and our own Catholic Faith. Begin your journey through Tolkien's fantastical world...

Joseph Pearce writes ... I'm at EWTN at the moment and had a sneak preview of the forthcoming Hobbit special on which we worked. It's truly superb and you are as wonderful as ever! It's being aired on December 5th. Can't wait to see it! We filmed two specials - one on The Hobbit and one on The Lord of the Rings.  I have not yet heard when the second one will air.  I play Tolkien in both specials and Joseph offers his insightful commentary on the Catholic elements in Tolkien's works.  I'll pass long more info as it's passed...

Dan Price was once a successful but stressed out family man in Kentucky but left it all behind twenty years ago to live underground in the Oregon woods. He's the Hobbit hole man who walked away from the 9-to-5 life, dug himself a house under a horse pasture and he has never looked back. ‘When you get rid of things and you’re willing to have less, you’re given a gift of more,’ said Price as he sat in his 8-foot abode.Price once worked as a photojournalist to help support his wife and two young kids and to pay the family...

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The archaeologist who helped discover the extinct Homo species Flores Hobbit, Professor Mike Morwood, has died after a struggle with cancer. New Zealand-born Professor Morwood, who was based at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Wollongong, was also a world expert in Australian rock art. Professor Morwood was based at the University of New England in 2003 when he and a team of Indonesian researchers excavated the Liang Bua Cave on the island of Flores and found a set of curious bones that came to be known as Homo floresiensis or the Hobbit. The discovery...

Research on human fossils generally proceeds at a leisurely pace. Those who discover new bones sometimes take years to analyze them, while their colleagues and rivals wait impatiently to get a good look. But that's not the case with the 18,000-year-old "hobbit" skeleton of Indonesia. Ever since the Australian- Indonesian team that discovered the bones made the startling claim that they are the remains of a species of small, archaic human, Homo floresiensis (Nature, 28 October, p. 1055), the bones have been analyzed and reanalyzed at a breathtaking pace. For the past 3 months, however, the studies have been directed...

Newly found species goes missing again By Stephen Cauchi Science reporter February 10, 2005 The disputed Homo Floresiensis. Photo: Robert Pearce The remains of an extinct metre-high human species have become virtually as hidden as they were before their discovery last year rocked the world of palaeontology. One of Indonesia's leading palaeontologists is refusing to hand back the remains to the team that found them on the Indonesian island of Flores. As reported last year, Professor Teuku Jacob, of Gadjah Mada University, grabbed the remains of the seven creatures - dubbed "hobbits" - and locked them in his safe, refusing...

A unique book that purports to explain the past existence of giant beings referred to in the Bible as the Nephilim is skyrocketing up online best-sellers lists, now appearing in the top 15 at Amazon.com. Published by Xulon Press, "The Nephilim and the Pyramid of the Apocalypse" presents an explanation for an unusual verse in the first book of the Bible, Genesis 6:4, which reads: "There were giants (Nephilim) in the Earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men and they bare children to them." The book's author,...

Researchers say they have found "Hobbit" tools on an Indonesian island near where the remains of nine ancient individuals were found. The researchers have excavated more than 500 stone tools within several miles of the remains of Homo floresiensis, believed to have inhabited the site from an estimated 95,000 to 12,000 years ago, the BBC reported Friday. "At Mata Menge there are hundreds and hundreds of in situ stone artifacts with Stegodon fossils," Mike Morwood, of the University of New England, director of the excavations, told the BBC News. Last year, the announcement that a partial skeleton about three feet...

Richard Roberts, discoverer of the Hobbit, says local tales suggest the species could still exist When I was back in Flores earlier this month we heard the most amazing tales of little, hairy people, whom they called Ebu Gogo - Ebu meaning grandmother and Gogo meaning 'he who eats anything'. The tales contained the most fabulous details - so detailed that you'd imagine there had to be a grain of truth in them. One of the village elders told us that the Ebu Gogo ate everything raw, including vegetables, fruits, meat and, if they got the chance, even human meat....

Fossil finds of early humans in southeast Asia may actually be the remains of an unknown ape. Russell Ciochon says that many palaeoanthropologists -- including himself -- have been mistaken. Fourteen years ago, a Nature paper by my colleagues and I described a 1.9-million-year-old human jaw fragment from Longgupo in Sichuan province, China1. The ancient date in itself was spectacular. Previous evidence had suggested that human ancestors arrived in east Asia from Africa about 1 million years ago, in the form of Homo erectus. Longgupo nearly doubled that estimate. But even more exciting -- and contentious -- was our claim...

Following on from the previous article, The First Boat People, we know that Sahul, the original name of Australia during prehistoric times, was settled around 40,000 years ago. Although this date is disputed it is now universally accepted as the most accurate and reliable. But who were these first people and from where did they come? Could humans have developed in Australia at the same time they were developing in Africa? Was there a wave of immigrants or only one founding population? And where does Homo floriensis fit into this picture, if at all? It can quite comfortably be stated...

Welcome to The Hobbit Hole! Journey to the Cross-roads The Two Towers Edition Come on! Come in! -if you would like to have some seedcakes and a pint and relax a while. (If it is a special occasion, we still have a few bottles of the old wineyards left!) Our first thread ( New Zealander builds Hobbit hole ) reached 4,100 posts, and we thought that was big. Our second thread (The New Hobbit Hole ) held us for over 48,000 posts, and we loved it dearly. We talked about moving to a new thread for the last 38,000 posts,...

The Real 'Hobbit' Had Larger Brain Than Thought Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor Date: 16 April 2013 Time: 07:01 PM ETThe hobbit, Homo floresiensis, lived on the island of Flores some 18,000 years ago, and now researchers have more evidence (its relatively large brain) the diminutive creature was a unique human species. The brain of the extinct "hobbit" was bigger than often thought, researchers say. These findings add to evidence that the hobbit was a unique species of humans after all, not a deformed modern human, scientists added. The 18,000-year-old fossils of the extinct type of human officially known as Homo...

In what was once the housekeeper's office of a Tudor mansion in Hampshire, a very odd golden ring glitters on a revolving stand in a tall perspex column. In chapter five of The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins finds a ring in the gloom of Gollum's cave. Not just any ring. "One very beautiful thing, very beautiful, very wonderful. He had a ring, a golden ring, a precious ring." A new exhibition opening today at The Vyne, now owned by the National Trust, raises the intriguing possibility that the Roman ring in the case, and the ring of power in JRR Tolkien's...

We went to see The Hobbit yesterday and we thought it was awful. Been surprised that since it's release there haven't been any posts to the Hole. Are you all disgusted with Part 1?