After del Toro’s departure due to production delays, Peter Jackson took the helm. During production, the decision was made to expand the project into three films. This required a massive rewriting effort to stretch the source material while incorporating appendices from The Lord of the Rings . Narrative Expansion: Beyond the Book
The result is a screenplay that often feels like a palimpsest—traces of del Toro’s gothic, whimsical sensibilities (particularly in the Goblin-town and Mirkwood sequences) layered with Jackson’s epic, battle-hardened Rings vernacular. The most significant narrative decision—expanding the story from two films to three—was made mid-stream, forcing the writers to invent new subplots and characters to pad the runtime. the hobbit screenplay