The Extended Edition of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies will be released on 16 November in the UK and 17 November in the USA. It will also be available early on Digital HD from 20 October.
The Extended Edition will include 20 minutes extra footage not part of the theatrical release, which clocked in at 2 hours and 24 minutes, along with 9 hours special features.
New Material
New scenes likely to appear include a “chariot race” and a funeral sequence featuring speeches from Gandalf. According to Richard Armitage,
They spent a lot of time and money building a chariot and the computer graphics in that sequence are really special. I think Balin is driving the chariot and Dwalin is on the back firing off weapons, and Kili and Fili are hanging off the side of it. I think that whole sequence is a three and half-minute chase so there’s quite a lot of footage.
More speculation on “A Tolkienist’s Perspective” blog.
Warner Bros. Press Release
The adventures of Bilbo Baggins come to an epic conclusion when “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” from Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson, is released as an Extended Edition on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group. A production of New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (MGM), the extended cut of the final film in The Hobbit Trilogy includes 20 minutes of extra footage and more than 9 hours of bonus features that will complete every Hobbit fan’s collection. The film, the third in a trilogy of films adapting the enduringly popular masterpiece The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien, will be available on Blu-ray and DVD on November 17 and will be available early on Digital HD on October 20.
In addition, The Hobbit Trilogy Extended Edition will also be available, featuring the extended editions of all three films in The Hobbit Trilogy – The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Extended Edition will be available as a 3-disc Blu-ray set ($35.99 SRP); and a 5-disc DVD set ($34.99 SRP). The Blu-ray and DVD include a digital version of the movie on Digital HD with UltraViolet. Fans can also own “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” via purchase from digital retailers.
The nine plus hours of new special features boasts audio commentary with Peter Jackson, the film’s director/producer/screenwriter, and Philippa Boyens, co-producer/screenwriter, as well as The Appendices, a multi-part documentary focusing on various aspects of the film and the Trilogy.
The Hobbit Trilogy Extended Edition will be available as a 9-disc Blu-ray set ($99.98 SRP); and a 15-disc DVD set ($78.92 SRP). The Blu-ray and DVD Trilogy sets include digital versions of the movies on Digital HD with UltraViolet. Fans can also own The Hobbit Trilogy Extended Edition via purchase from digital retailers.
