First Behind-the-Scene Look at 'The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Fans champing at the bit for the next Hobbit film will find lots to enjoy in this new video Q&A with director Peter Jackson, who says that The Desolation of Smaug will be a more complex movie than 2012's An Unexpected Journey.

The clip gives viewers the opportunity to look round the New Zealand studio where Desolation is now in post-production and hear Jackson, actor Jed Brophy (who plays Ori in the films) and editor Jabez Olssen respond to questions from the public.

Among the individuals who submitted queries to the trio were US talk show host Stephen Colbert and Billy Boyd, who played Peregrin Took in Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy“It is complicated to do a middle film like The Desolation of Smaug,” said Jackson during the session. “The advantage is that we have multiple storylines. The first of the Hobbit movies is a fairly linear film – Gandalf leads the dwarves across Middle-earth at the beginning of this adventure.

“The great thing about the second movie – as it was with The Two Towers, actually – is that the story starts spreading into multiple storylines.”

Jackson also showed off some early footage of actors Stephen Fry, Evangeline Lilly and Orlando Bloom from the new film, and revealed that the trailer for The Desolation of Smaug will be released this summer.

The Desolation of Smaug will be released in British cinemas in December 2013 and the final part of the trilogy, There and Back Again, is slated for release in December 2014.